Unconventional…

Was going to let go of this post and let it go off for another week, but here I am, trying to finish it to the best I can just before Thursday. Let's hope this works out well!
I was going to post about two main topics. One is related to re-creating (old) panoramas from adjusted RAW files (if you don't know me by now, I usually shoot for HDR when it comes to panoramas), and two is presenting some ideas about representing images. However, the first topic did not go smoothly (for now) but I will post about it later hopefully. I'll dedicate this post mainly for the second topic, which I thought of calling "Unconventional," because it is all about weird or not-so-common dimensions when representing photos. 

Unconventional

As I've said above, it is just a bunch of ideas that raced through my mind lately. However, it is not the first time. I'm just taking one step further in this topic of representing photos in some unconventional ways.
The idea, in simple terms, is to get rid of the conventional ways of representing photos in "orthogonal" axes, namely rectangular or square frames. Instead, how would it be if photos are represented freely? Essentially, this is not new, since in classical times many photos (specially portraits) were cut to fit a circular or an oval framing; A trend that seems to have had disappeared in current times, specially with the digital era. My thoughts, however, roam about and around both realms: The digital, and the print.

عين السلطان (The Sultan's Eye)

Killing Evil

The idea of breaking the dimensions is not new to me as I've done that already with my panorama in Oman from inside the Qaboos Grand Mosque in Muscat back in 2015, The Sultan's Eye. This image is a panorama rendered in little planet format and that formed beautiful concentric circles which inspired me then to cut out the edges and make it as a perfect circle as a whole. To keep the image as a circle, I had to save it as PNG which, along with GIF, is a format the saves transparency in the image and can be dealt with through the web. On the web though, people might not realize that the image is "circular" because, simply, the frame is still rectangular in shape; A user would only figure this out if they downloaded the image or changed the background color in the viewing environment, which is something seldomly done. I really wanted to print this panorama on aluminum and present it to the Omani embassy here but I've always racked up this desire on the shelf for more important matters then (and now). The workers in the aluminum workshop told me already that the image can be indeed made into a circle using a water-powered special gun to cut out the edges into a perfect circle as in the image.
Another method which was used in the past and nowadays is to shoot the subject across various images, as can be seen in Killing Evil, which was part of a project back in 2017 when I was with the group then. In the past though it was realistically through shooting several shots (mainly polaroids) and exhibit them in that manner, attached together or glued in some way to form the full shape of the subject. Probably I can call this a "broken panorama" of some sort. Anyway, this is what I did in Killing Evil but rather digitally than physically (and it was never intended to be printed). It can be of course, but I never did. Here in Killing Evil, the background was painted black already for the purpose of displaying the image digitally, otherwise it could have remained transparent as well (and saved as PNG).

 

The Floating Inchagoill

Both The Sultan's Eye and Killing Evil were some artwork from the past, but the idea progressed further as I was working (again) in recent years with this panorama from inside the historical Inchagoill church which I've shot back in 2014. What happened here, after stitching this old panorama anew, is that I wanted to minimize the distortion in trees because they were closer to the top of the image. Thus, I made the main subject smaller and smaller towards the center to reduce this distortion and that resulted, of course, in a vast blue area from the sky. Things followed after the stitch and when I looked at this image, I thought to myself, why would I make this image rectangular or squared? I've tilted the "planet" here on purpose, to reduce the distractions in the trees further as much as possible. So, instead of cropping the surplus area of blue and make the image as a "square", I thought why not cut it along the general orientation of the planet as a whole, and keep the transparency. If, for any reason, this image is to be printed, I would definitely display it as it is; Tilted like that. 

Unconventional Green Delight

As I progressed further, trying to experiment and explore my options more, I've started cropping some images to see how would they look like, as the one above, Unconventional Green Delight, which I've purposefully shot tilted. In this image, I've used squares to crop the main body in the image (the central stem) along with the branching ears. Anyway, when I compare this method with the cropping of The Floating Inchagoill, I do realize that the squares here do not get along with the main subject which is composed of lines mainly. It looks rigid. Probably if I did spread the shoot for this plant on several frames and then combine them together as was the case with Killing Evil - probably things could have looked better, as the broken lines in Killing Evil were done on purpose and by virtue of design these separate frames do act as if they are trying to grab the attention of the viewer to every detail of the full image spreading across the many frames. I might work again with this image and try to cut it with straight lines instead (it is hard to take several shots of it and combine them later).

Unconventional Planeta Cuvaitum (2011)

Unconventional Planeta Herba (2012)

Probably you've noticed the trend now with starting each image of those with Unconventional. Anyway, working further on exploring what can be done about this kind of images (or format of images), I've thought right away of checking some of these old planet panoramas that I've done in the past. In fact, they seem to be the most proper candidate for such non-orthogonal cuts by virtue of their original design, as planets; This is of course limited to these panoramas done outdoors because we can have some portion of the sky which is easier to cut (relatively, not always). However, the sun proves to be problematic in such compositions, and while it can be removed altogether from Unconventional Planeta Cuvaitum it is yet hard to do so with Unconventional Planeta Herba, because it mingles with elements on the planet itself. This said, though, I do like how the random branches of these bushes in Unconventional Planeta Herba look like as if they were floating in space with no blue sky. I wonder how would this thing look like if just by magic I was able to print it in 3D?

Thoughts:

Well, I'm not a tech guy by any means, but this is something that I've been reflecting about and wondering about the technical difficulties that do face such representations for photos, away from the orthodox methods that are common and know.
Now, images like The Sultan's Eye or The Floating Inchagoill can be quite easy to be printed and cut out, but it won't be the same for sure when it comes for images like Unconventional Planeta Herba which has a great amount of details in the brushes that need to be cut out. Probably a handwork with specialty cutting knives would do? Maybe. Though I can't imagine it done that way. If objects were done in 3D with 3D printers, I do foresee or maybe I can dream that such flat images of floating pixels and that had been cut off from its background in irregular shapes - that, might as well be done in some manner and methodology related to the technology of 3D printing. This really reminds me of those visual aids and prints that we used to do as kids for school, but those images were, well, paintings; Very simple paintings and made specifically to be cut out.

Now that was on the physical plane, but I'm not sure how easy it would be on the digital plane. Sure, images can be displayed on the web (like you see here in this post) using PNG format. However, there are two or three issues, at least for me:

1. The format itself. I think PNG is acceptable on most platforms right now but I don't think it is as common as JPG. Also, to what I know, it is not compressed. Thus, even though the image is saved with transparent pixels that are supposed to not carry any data of any color, these do take up a considerable size. Also, I'm not sure that the web in general is flexible with TIFF format, yet.
   
2. Displaying these photos, like in this blog, or anywhere else on the web really, still takes the rectangular dimension. I remember back in the 1980s and 1990s when printed newspapers were THE thing, they had back then some methods to incorporate images within the articles where the text seeps on the sides of such images, making the images appear as floating over the text. This can be done in editing phase in Photoshop (I did that for some ads and posters) but imagine this is done right away on the web by default. The transparent pixels that the image has are not yet truly transparent in my opinion because the image is still dealt with and considered as a rectangle and the text goes about that accordingly.
3. A minor issue: How would the viewer on the web feel or get the impression that image is floating or somewhat 3D, with transparent background? If the background is plain, typically black or white, and sometimes gray (well, most of the time that is), then a viewer probably get that impression about the image (maybe not so if the background is colored indeed). Or, maybe a shadow can be added to the image to give the impression that it is floating but, again, this shadow should not be added in Photoshop (using layer effects), but rather in the viewing environment (e.g. web browser). Technically, I don't know how this is possible, or whether it is possible at all.

These are some thoughts about displaying and printing images with "unconventional" dimensions and transparent background. Not sure how practical these are (most probably not) but it would have been somewhat amazing to see images floating, beside displaying such images in exhibitions and art galleries, at a considerable size. I think it would deliver some 3D sensation to the viewer (better than those anaglyphs that I've printed for some exhibitions I'd say). 

Finale

So, these are some thoughts about what I've been working on and thinking of in the past weeks, and still. There was another matter considering re-working old panoramas using processed RAW files instead of the typical HDR approach that I usually follow with panoramas. However, this one needs a lengthy work and considerations must be taken. So far, all my trials had failed and the only way successful one was actually a combination various RAW files, but that's a story for another time. 

Old (HDR tone-mapping)

New (processed RAW)

The difference is clear. However I do it in HDR, I couldn't possibly get natural as the new one done with RAW files only. But, the catch is, the panorama done with the RAWs are a bit complicated for the time being. Something I will check further in the coming weeks hopefully.

As you read this, I hope life did not have its toll on your mood and spirit already. I'm not sure where I am heading with all of this, but I do wish that one day, I would open my eyes and it's all gone. Just, gone… see you.

 

Alexander 6, V4.

TGIW. Thank God It's Wednesday! A phrase I missed typing or saying for a long time after changing the weekend system in Kuwait, making the weekend on Friday and Saturday instead; which sucks! We got a holiday here extending until next Monday. Woho! No work on a MONDAY!
I'm planning to go out earlier today, and that's why I'm writing my blog earlier than usual. After finishing 2 verses of transliteration from Alexander VI, I took sometime on writing a short little poem. Something to the memory of Oughterard and Ireland. I named it "The Path of Oughterard."

The images I took the day before yesterday were not so special or anything, without any sparkle or life in them, and also not sharp enough and somewhat blurry. Thus, I decided not to work on the tone-mapping for them and instead, I kept on working stitching some old panorama I made for my work place.


The stitching process takes almost half a day. I made this parnoama before and it is not a quite spherical panorama, because I didn't take pictures for the ceiling in complete sequences, but it was a 360 degrees one made on 2 rows. This is the second time I make a trial with this panorama, as I made it normal the last time. Here, I've made my mind to make it as a "little planet" projection (also called Stereo). The first stitching process stopped after it reached the end almost with some error regarding the creation of the JPEG file (I remember it was related to the damn RAMs), and I thank God that it was a sequence of JPG images only and not HDR! Anyway, choosing the final creation to be saved as a JPG was a mistake as well because I wanted to keep the transperancy as well. Thus, I had to stitch again and this time, the end-product is saved as a PSD (more than 500MB in size but only one layer!). I manipulated the image later on (this morning and in a hurry), making it more sharp and minimized it from its original size (close to 20,000 pixels height and width). For web purposes I decided to save the image in a GIF format to save the transperancy, but unfortunately the picture was sluggish and spotted for the low quality. Thus, I decided to put it up as a PNG, but of course the file size would be a bit larger than the GIF version. The JPG format of course, won't save me the transperancy in the image.
This is said and done, I might try to construct my own softbox in the coming days, as something to do for fun at home and also it would be useful in the future. I have in my mind many sizes to construct currently, and to begin with, I would do a flash-mounted little softbox, to reduce the glare of the flash on objects (since I suffered this sooooo much with my trials on my censer). Also, I intend to make out a light tent, or a light box, in which lights are projected from the outside and the object is in the middle of the box with a white background. I wanted to do some trials with my camera yesterday, but with the stitching process that took almost half a day and took over most of the memory in my PC, I neglected such idea completely!


__________
73. and Alexander was shaken by the speech
74. and could not imagine the age of the man
75. what is going around him and what is the logic
76. nothing seems to bear meaning to him now
77. then he gathered the power to ask the old man
78. "and how shall I get to the lands of Ayvars?"
79. so the old man answered: you shall answer my dear!
80. and with a strange look, Alexander gazed upon his face
81. and then he said: you are the grandson,
82. you don't know how to visit your ancestors?
83. then Náwi answered with sadness apparent in his eyes
84. "my dear friend, your question revives memories,
85. of long lost tribes and nations, wisdom and faith,
86. my ancestors went away with their secrets,
87. and here I am left alone with my sons away from them,
88. and it is mentioned in ancient books that we had,
89. about a the poor and rich man, whose name is Vuqurnún
90. who has light in his face and a spot on his forehead
91. and his red hair go down on his shoulders
92. and his teeth are white with bluish color
93. carrying his sword of the three points
94. and his golden shield of the sun's image
95. he shall know the road to the ancients
96. and by his hands the secret is revealed"

Drowsy...

Back to the rhythm of the week. I really don't know how did I reach work with such closed eyes, but I do remember that I was driving with 170 kmph. I arrived to work bringing nothing of the usual stuff with me from home, namely, the envelope which I use to put Alexander's story in. Hopefully, I'm going to concentrate my power on writing something for the other story though...

Been working last night (literally speaking, I should say till today's dawn) on fixing the panoramic shots that I had last Friday. I made it out and had to play around with the colors even after the formation of the HDR image (which is supposed to give nice colors from the beginning when converted to 16-bit and fixed with Local Adaptation's histogram). The image, as some said, is nice in general, but I didn't like the dark areas of the stress, and the high red saturation in the image in some areas. Tried to fix some exposures and saturation but that did not work out greatly:

You might notice the red beams on the far left. These are the "laser-beam" effect that I talked about last time, when cars passed me by and the camera was still in "shuttering" mode. Looks like if Flash, the superhero, was just passing by this way.

I'm starting to use the PNG format for my images upload since it is the only way to put the images on the net with 16-bit format. I'm not sure though whether the format is converted automatically when I upload the images, but I hope nothing is changed. The JPG images can be saved only in 8-bit format, thus making less number of shades for each channel in the RGB system.

It was one heavy nap I had in the office today. Although I woke up to type this but I can hardly concentrate without tilting the image in my eyes. I have to do something with this drowsiness.

Busted...

Despite the fact that I was tired and stayed awake for more than 12 hours, yet I couldn't sleep more than 4 hours. I had the urge to go on photoshooting just one hour before the sunrise. I didn't have any plan of what to snap, so I just went on into the streets hoping to find something, and then voila! I did find it.
It was a sloping down road, surrounded by trees (people who know the place, it is the branching road from 5th ring road into the Maghrib Highway). After taking shots, aiming at some panoramic view, I was surprised by a police patrol who stopped by to ask me about what I was doing. I was questioned just because I was standing in a straight line with some building called the "control tower" which has some controls for electricity and water I think. He said that I would be considered like a terrorist who is getting some information (well he said that indirectly). Anyway, I was lucky that I got the photos I wanted for a panorama shot before his arrival. Now after looking at the pictures and processing them I found out that I made a mistake that I didn't shoot with high shutter speed instead. There were few cars passing by, but the main blur was from the moving trees because of the somewhat tough wind that was there. The funny thing is, while shooting, some cars passed by and the shutter was still closed, and that created some funny noise in the images but it doesn't bother me at all. I called it the "Laser-beams effect." You see only red lines in the middle with no car showing! Hopefully I would post some of this here later when I settle on some good shot.
After moving from that place, after being annoyed with that cop, I decided to go to the seashore, but not my usual spot, but to some mall. The Marina Mall Crescent. There is a marina (sea port) with yachts there, so I tried my luck to shoot there as well and made it for a panoramic sequence. I need to do a lot with those files, specilaly that they are in RAW (CR2) format and not in JPG, which makes it even sensitive somehow and not directly to be dealt with as JPG files. They say RAW files are better for HDR composition.
That's all with my life for the time being after a dull and tiresome week, and a boring weekend as usual! Ta da!