Selfies Go Leor…

Well, seems my stalemate is still going on with my Scopa project on hold for the lack of resources (well, models). I'm trying to work on other projects as much as possible, but with the back of rush hours and schools, I'm literally drained out of power every time I'm back home from work and now I need to cope with afternoons naps mechanisms! Yet, this is not the only frustrating thing to deal with, more to come later below.

Schizophrenia

This is one of the ideas I've probably put in a list in my last post. Some idea to reflect the inner struggle, and I was turning around this idea in my head some time before even discovering that I'm an INFP-T type according to some tests. Yet, looking at it at some specific angle, it does look like reflecting on one side of that personality type. Anyway, I preferred to call it Schizophrenia. 

Schizophrenia

The blending work with this work was not a big deal and somehow done quickly (compared to what I used to do with the peeling effect). However, there are a number of mistakes that I've realized after finishing this work, and even after doing my final touches to this little project. But let's first see some aspects of "behind the scene:"

• Four speedlites were used here: Two reflecting from a cardboard below and two bounced off the ceiling. This system is often called the Clam shell lighting.
• To kill the ambient light as much as possible, I needed to use HSS mode to go over the sync speed (shot at 1/400s), at f/8 with ISO 160.
• Technically, my brother is the photographer but since I'm the one who directed everything and all he has to do is press the button, I think I have to say it's my own work ^_^ - Anyway, he is still having a problem with focusing properly!
• Shot using Voigtländer 20mm with B+W 092 Infrared filter. I definitely had to work with infrared here since it provides quite and interesting contrast and looks (and not just turning my eyes blue!).
• I had to satisfy myself in the beginning with the background, which I wished for to be completely black (and black substances are hard to work with in infrared as well).

After finishing with all the work with the camera, it was the time then for processing the images. It was here essentially that I've found out about my mistakes but it would be hard to go back and re-do the whole thing, but let it be a lesson to learn from. 

• Initially, I wanted to show each face on its own, but then I've found myself attaching the eyes together as it looked more proper and smoother in transition in blend between the different faces. This issued the problem with the expressions: facial expressions are not clear for the lack of the eye compliment.
• Among the faces, where I tried to mimic fear, anger, sadness, and absence of mind, I've found myself forgetting about one of the basic expressions: Happiness and smiling.
• Using a wide-angle lens was a grave mistake. I was aiming at cropping the images from the beginning and this is why I used a wide-angle lens (to have more space to cut). However, looking at it now, probably I should have used my 50mm lens for this project. The final finish is actually such a small image that would be barely suitable to be printed on A4 size!
• Despite using ISO 160 which is proved to be my native ISO, yet the noise frequency was somehow higher than the usual unlike the tests I've done! Could it be because of the sensor being overheating? Not sure.

The background here had to be done in a special process, since I wanted to add a dark atmosphere to the scene. I used Lens Blur for the background and added some vignetting to the whole scene as well. The eyes, specifically, needed some push in exposure as well so I dodged them a little to let them shine. This little work now in fact gives me further ideas to think about doing later on as well. Maybe I could have done something extra to this same project, like taking more images and find a way to merge them, with more mouths and more eyes - but then it wouldn't be much about Schizophrenia probably!

Che

I've been fascinated for some time by the portrait done for Che Guevara (the portrait, not the person). I've been dubbing this type or form of art or effect as a Seal Effect, as it resembles somehow the shape of the wax seal when stamped. However, I'm not aware if there is any good name for this, and probably I should just called it the Che Effect! In my previous post, I've posted a selfie which I've edited in a similar way somehow. I'm aware though that Che's portrait is most probably a work of art, meaning not a manipulation for some photograph of him; I'm not really not sure. Anyway, I tried my best with that selfie of mine to mimic the effect with whatever tools I have available for me in PS. 

Selfie Seal

Generally speaking, I think this effect would do better if the selfie is shot with one flash or speedlite; In other words, one-directional light. Techniques like the Low-Key would do better here. It's all about the play of light and shadows, and the dramatic look. However, this is just my own notes about it, and in fact I've tried to work with another selfie (part of the Schizophrenia project above) which was lit on two sides instead of one, and I still did get some reasonable final result as will be shown in few.

Original selfie, which was in fact a
screen capture rather than a saved
file from the original shot!

The Ghost

 I've taken this selfie and with some clicks and effects I've ended up with the desired result. I've found myself forced to use excessive sharpening as well before doing the whole work to provide some enough grains to be merged later as black areas of some sort. Anyway, after finishing the image, I felt there was something missing. Without much feeling about it, I've got into the Liquify command in Photoshop and just started splashing things randomly and the result was something more of... a Ghost peeking at me. Doing such work with my selfies does in fact inspire me to do more ideas with myself, since it's hard to find anyone willing to work with me, even for few minutes. Some suggested to hire a model, which it possible of course. However, under the current circumstances and finances, it is better to be off away from this option for the time being, and needless to say, I do not consider myself a professional portrait photographer and not even someone who has a keen interest in this subject. It is just random ideas kicking in and out of my head and I feel myself compelled to do them. What is amazing about this last work, The Ghost, it did in fact kick in some desire for poetry back and without knowing it I was there typing a poem. Though random probably with scattered feelings, but it was something to be done.

The Ghost.
-
There he was,
and there he is.
A gazing figure,
an apprentice.
-
Pale in horror,
a figure of shame.
Terror, he served me,
by terror, him I tame.
-
Friendly Ghost,
and black is the color.
Timidly a Ghost,
fierce in angst and valor.
-
Opposites rhyme,
only in his caress.
Touching my heart,
set me in abyss.
-
Awful, how he looks,
such a beauty in misery.
Gazer I was upon that,
Alas, in that mirror,
That Ghost was just me.

The poem was also posted on Writing.com, which I didn't use in a long time now. There is a great urge to go back to writing, specially after reading how my typical INFP-T personality would act and react, which I find 95% of it is correct indeed. That personality report did give me some confidence which I was lacking, and restored my image of myself to myself, after believing that I was abnormal in some aspects. But this is who I am indeed...

Finale

There is an increasing feeling of leaving everything and just isolate myself, there in my room, and preferably doing nothing. I'm literally getting tired of everything. As for my Scopa project which I need to finish, and it should be finished with because some people are waiting for the results, I'm so tired for chasing after some people to shoot for this project. Re-doing any shot is a catastrophic aftermath as well, if there is any need be. This rest might include blogging as well; I have to admit that blogging does indeed put some stress on me to finish it in time. Probably I would invest all that time in shooting photos and sleeping! If only I don't have to go to work anyway...
One of the disasters that I've found out lately, as I'm planning to do my Retinitis Pigmentosa Month project, is the fact that in this country NO blind stick or cane is to be found any where by any vendor!!! I was advised to call major pharmacies for some private hospitals and clinics to check with them, but seeing how things did go with some major companies of medical supplies here, I'm not optimistic that I would be able to find any. I have now 2 options, and as we say in Arabic: "The sweetest of them is bitter." Option one, is to mimic the looks of the cane or maybe use a regular cane instead. Second option, is to change my whole idea for this project and try to find some other idea to implement which requires no cane. I'm inclined to pick the second option but I have to think quick. Not sure if brainstorming would do here either. Can you imagine a country with no blind-canes around?! I can, of course, order these, but I really have no time to waste waiting for such a shipment, so I've neglected this idea. However, I might indeed order such a cane in some other time as I find it interesting to train myself using it. After all, I'm a person with some eye disease, and not sure when all that is visual simply stops working for me…

Stalemate…

Sounds it's been ages since I've typed anything here. Actually I was busy with my other Arabic blog putting up an article discussing the "Native ISO" as a concept, and how to find it out practically for the camera under question. It seems anyway that most, if not all, Canon cameras do have a native ISO of 160. I used to mix up the concept of the lowest ISO and the Native ISO, but it turned out this is not correct. After testing, I find it indeed as it was mentioned in many websites and discussion threads, the Native ISO of 160 for Canon has less noise than ISO 100 (the lowest)! Not only that, but even one full stops from ISO 160 (e.g. 320, 640) do show lesser level of noise from those less and those more in one third stop for each value. This is one major step of knowledge in fact, as gaining 2/3 of a stop without sacrificing the quality to the noise can do wonders, specially when working with speedlites and high-speed photography. Thus, from now on, I'm going to set my ISO on 160 by default!

Scopone

It feels like being in a head-lock with this Scopa project. Been days now, or rather weeks, without doing anything about it. This is mainly for the lack of people (models) who are willing to take the step with me, as I've finished all the regular cards, and now it is time to shoot the court cards which must contain a person. 

Fante di Denari

My first trial was to shoot the Fante di Denari with my nephew; A shot that needs to be re-done apparently. The shot was taken with my Voigtländer 20mm lens which apparently proved to be a bad choice here, not because of the distortion (barely visible here), but because of the extra spaces that I needed to deal with and which resulted in some space above the head, and that, should not there. Adding to that, my nephew's devilish looks were not, well, devilish enough! After this shot, I've decided to shoot next with my 50mm, which is in fact the correct choice for portraiture photography on cropped sensors like my camera's, because it approximate the perspective of 80mm lens on full-frame camera. So I moved next to do the Fante di Spade, and this time the victim is the usual brother of mine. One day I think he would be killing me but I can't find any better replacements! 

Fante di Spade

Beside changing the lens to 50mm when doing the Fante di Spade, I've also changed the position of the speedlites. Instead of striking from below on the side as in Fante di Denari, I've placed them right in front of my brother in Fante di Spade. Because of the lack of space inside the frame, I've changed here to a dagger instead, as placing a sword in such narrow space would eventually cause it to protrude outside the frame. Can't say I'm satisfied about his hand placement with the dagger but I need to satisfy myself with it for the time being, after directing his pose myself (ahem). He had some hard time wearing all these stuff already! With him, a devilish face was achieved, and I pretty much liked it that I've made his head shot into a separate image by cropping from the original before converting the whole image to B&W.

Il Fante

It's a good thing that I've been doing all this project's shots in infrared, as it opens such a wide gate for creativity instead of sticking to the original colors, and not to mention the fact that our eyes turn bluish in such images making them a bit more interesting!

Exactly how my chess horse looks like.

Now to add to my obstacles and problems, we have the issue of the Cavallo, the Horseman or Horse card. Of course I will not be shooting a real horse, but it was time to think further of some substitute. Initially, my idea was to find a horse head costume, but seeing how it was hard to get a crown for my Re (king) shooting later on (and I'm not sure if they will fit properly even), so I had to think of something else. It seems inevitable to do some photo editing and montage and the idea was there for me: Superimposing an image of a horse over the original shot. Thought of downloading the image from some photo stock website, but then I thought why not shoot it myself. My first target was my chess pawns, but that thing did look like a Scottish terrier more than a horse!!!

Re-Discover

Since my Scopa project is undergoing a stalemate, I've decided for a big part to dig up and check old photos and apply some techniques that I've not used in a long time, namely the  LAB Editing technique, in which colors are enhanced or modified by converting the image to LAB from RGB (and back to RGB later). Meanwhile, I did indeed discover some stuff, and also I did process some pretty old images that I've totally neglected because of various reasons (mainly being of bad exposure or shaky) - so old were they that some of them actually date back to 2009 with my first visit to Ireland with my old Canon 350D and 2 kit lenses! Moreover, there were some "artistic" editing to some images, doing effects and all these stuff... you know.

Tranquility by The Pond

It started well with some neglected shots from The Chinese Scholars Garden on Staten Island; shot back in 2012. I've neglected some of these shots mainly for not being "interesting" enough or simply because I was not able to think outside the box of HDR rendering. Thinking about HDR, sometimes, made me neglect those images with one shaky exposure. Moreover, some overexposures were and could have been fixed in certain techniques, and I failed to see through it back then. That's why I always hold the believe to always keep the "apparently" not so good images. You wouldn't know when it will be good, at least for the social media!

By The Pond

For many of these shots, the LAB Editing technique comes to the rescue even though the angle can be somewhat "boring." Indeed, I didn't even imagine that people would express their liking for Tranquility by The Pond or By The Pond at all. Worth noting here as well that reflections off the surface of the water were enhanced further by doing such technique and enhancing the colors in general (I didn't have a polarizer back then and I doubt I would be using it if I had it back then even). Probably it would have been even better with a polarizer for sure but at least something is saved and shown! Important thing though is: Editing the RAW file to enhance the shadows and show some details there, specially if it is the darkest exposure of some HDR bracketing trial.

Tríd an Triantán
(through the triangle)

When it comes to overexposure for some areas, and to be specific to the sky, where there are no details, like it was the case with Tríd an Triantán, a simple masking and adding a background would do the trick. I could have added some background from another source, but I always preferred to add from the same image, mostly by duplicating the layer and adding a layer mask to it, then moving it (while detaching the layer mask from the main layer). Some cloning work might be due though, just to add few touches or fix something. In Tríd an Triantán, which was shot in 2009 in the periphery of Ashford Castle (with 18-55mm kit lens), I tried to apply another effect to mimic the shallow depth of field; Say, just to keep it interesting. I've applied this effect before to another image from Staten Island, The Moon Gate, but probably it fits Tríd an Triantán more because of the angle of view (it goes straight, while it is somewhat upward in The Moon Gate).

The Moon Gate

To apply this effect, I had to use Lens Blur instead of the usual Gaussian Blur, and it had to be applied on 3 layers with 3 different levels of blurring. This is essential as in reality the shallow depth of field starts light and ends up heavy in the horizon (or at infinity). Moreover, such an effect is better off with Lens Blur because the algorithm used in this effect mimics the shallow depth of field for the lenses, while Gaussian Blur effect does not (and more systematic). Thus, to keep things real: Please use Lens Blur!
However, with all that work to revive some old forgotten shots, I'm doubtful about their "Printability" - Yes, that's word I've made up just now. Many of these shots look good in small sizes making them good for social media posting and all, but the original ones are unlikely to be printed in large sizes, say like A3 or A2 for any expo to come. This is mainly because of the noise level which, if cleaned, might take off more details than it should. But I wouldn't know for sure till I try, so we'll see!

Panoramic Endeavor

This is something I've been trying for a while since I'm not doing anymore panoramas; So just to create something new out of my previous work. This thing is mainly creating animations out of panoramas, and specially those planet or circular panoramas. Sometimes though, instead of animations, some tessellation-like patterns are made (and uploaded to the stocks!). The main target was Instagram in fact, but with those large files of tessellations or patterns, it did sound feasible to be uploaded (after reducing their dimensions) to the stocks.

A post shared by TJ.Photography (@tj_q8) on Jan 14, 2018 at 10:23pm PST

As for the animations, the main problem was the reduction in resolution with the ongoing rotation with each frame (rotating each frame 5°). To minimize this effect, I had to work on larger file sizes and in 16-bit TIFF if possible. However, later on and after reading some threads online, it seems that such a reduction is caused mainly by Photoshop itself for some algorithm-related problem it seems. Meanwhile, rotating an image to the main cardinal points (90°, 180° and 270°) does not reduce the quality of the image. Then it occurred to me, to do four specific layers of the image with each oriented to one of these cardinal directions and rotate each for 5° (making up for 17 frames per copy). This way, the quality loss will be lesser. Adding to that, I still do work with a large file and reducing it to a small size (with a crop) and then rendering the video for Instagram at even a smaller size. All that work is done with JPEGs images and not TIFF anymore, so sparing me the memory crisis! With the addition of Actions, the work now is even a piece of cake; All I have to do is click a button several times and now I have 17 frames rotating with 5° each.

A post shared by TJ.Photography (@tj_q8) on Jan 23, 2018 at 11:03pm PST

For the time being, the favorite size to render these animations to is 600X600 pixels. However, it seems that I have to uplift the limit a bit and try 800X800 pixels, as it might look a bit stretched on some devices. And speaking of animations, there is another useful usage for them for regular horizontal panoramas, where I used to cut these into 3 slides (most of the time) and post them in a Swipe or Album manner on Instagram. Posting them like that did make up for some awkward alignment and that's why I would need to add a 4^th slide to put things in a proper perspective. Now though, doing animations, this is not necessary anymore. I can simply move the panorama horizontally and it is played back as a video in the same window and no need to swipe!

A post shared by TJ.Photography (@tj_q8) on Jan 15, 2018 at 10:21pm PST

There is a tiny problem with these horizontal animations though, which is how to divide the horizontal movement on equal number of pixels that matches the width of the panorama. Thus, unlike with polar/circular images, with displacement measured by degrees, the movement on the horizontal plane is measured by pixels. Hence, it does look sometimes as if the animation has jumps and not going smoothly. The loss in quality during these displacements though seems close to null apparently, which is good!

A post shared by TJ.Photography (@tj_q8) on Jan 6, 2018 at 10:29pm PST

A post shared by TJ.Photography (@tj_q8) on Jan 13, 2018 at 10:17pm PST

Vertical twisted panoramas as well appeal more to me for making textures like those above and I'm planning to do more of them soon. Those can make up for really huge files, but unfortunately, no stocks would be accepting them (maximum as far as I know, is around 30MB). It would be a great addition to have such files uploaded online at sizes of 100-300MB! To end this matter for now, here is a funny story:

As I was digging my old files looking for old panoramas and old neglected shots to do some art with them or animations, I've noticed that I didn't make a planet panorama from inside the Chinese Scholars Garden; specifically around the pond. I've made only a flat version of that place. Probably I've neglected this option because of some of the hardships and errors, I don't know! But looking at it now, it does sound good enough to be displayed.

Planeta Fenestra

To add some spices to "my discovery," I've edited the image with LAB technique again and tried to enhance some colors as well as reduce the overexposure (which is probably why I've neglected this panorama for long). And with this, we have a happy ending for this story and who knows, I might discover another neglected panorama!

Finale

Selfie Seal

With this long post, it does seem like I'm having a lot of activities in my life, while the truth is the opposite in fact, as I didn't touch my camera much and most of my work is about re-working old photos and trying to create something out of old things (even out of my selfie on the left). My mind is busy, and so is my schedule and body unfortunately. I do have a number of ideas I need to do, specially with February approaching; the Retinitis Pigmentosa Month. Just so to see, let's list these ideas down for the moment:

• Doing something for RP month as mentioned above.
• An old idea inspired by Sabah Fakhri, and still cannot do because I do need special arrangement and a narrow space.
• Infrared panorama indoors which would involve a hand (of a human or mannequin, whatever).
• Photo shoot for some selfies to be combined later on with Photoshop, reflecting schizophrenia or multi-personalities disorders.
• Photo series with chairs reflecting on corruption and old mentalities at work.
• Shooting through the microscope (again).
• Doing a photo shoot reflecting my personality as I deducted lately from some personality tests, where I got the classification of INFP-T (The Mediator type). 

All of these are just some ideas for now and all on hold, with my Scopa project on stalemate as well. Probably I'm dreaming too much? I guess. My life do look like being on a roller-coaster and I can't stop it. Everything around me is changing, and I don't see it to the good side. I pray that I will be able to travel for some time, away from this place, just to get things out of my mind for real. I feel like my mind and body are overflowing with those things they call "bad vibes." For some reason, I really don't feel like following onto that path of "positivity talk;" Deep inside, I feel it as seeing the world with pink-colored glasses and losing touch with reality, and the end result is a hard slam. If I'm thought of as a pessimist, then I guess I am with no shame in that. Probably my camera has done its job to its fulfillment, and the need to travel for some time is long due. When? I don't know…