Slowly Coming…

Been some months now since my last post (which was merely a post of keeping alive). This post probably isn't any different but I'm hoping to be an ignition for future posts as well. What was supposed to be merely few weeks of a vacation, had a twist in the planning. Many things had changed currently, and ideas had been coming and going. So, this post actually is merely like an update of few things that had been going on in my life lately. 

I may start this update from the end rather than from the beginning, with Mom being admitted into the hospital for 5 days after doctors had noticed low blood level (I take it as low hemoglobin level), so she needed some medical care and inspection beside blood transfusion. Doctors realized that her stomach was bleeding and they had to do endoscopy for inspection and treatment, beside the typical medicine for such cases. She returned home in the evening of Monday, September 4ᵗʰ (yesterday, at the time of typing this post).

Meanwhile, I've been snapping pictures randomly with my phone, without setting any goals or anything but merely something just occurs to me and I'd be lucky to have the phone on me to snap it. Summer was largely a depressing time, specially with some plants that I care for in the yard turning yellow and dying out, but luckily now in September, things started to get greener a bit. With the plants getting scorched and yellow, I felt like another load of depression had been weighing down on my shoulders and I was just looking for some kind of escape, but couldn't find any. Caring for such plants and see how green they have become was one of the simple things that gives me joy in my entrapment inside the house. 

Anyway, in my effort to break the monotony and (supposedly) to push myself to work with the camera further more, I've decided to order some new "toys" in July; Something that I've considered as a gift for my own birthday (though it was still to be on August 17ᵗʰ). The set of toys (as I like to call them) were from Amazon; some relatively cheap stuff, in hope that it would push me to experiment and find new interests in photography, even if it wasn't up to the level. Yet, up until typing this blog post down, I didn't do much about these toys, except for a filter or two.

Neewer's Kаleidoscope Prism

One of these filters is the Neewer Kаleidoscope Prism which I pretty much like and still looking for opportunities to use it whenever I can. So far, I've done one simple project with this filter, which I might try to post about it in some other time here.
Among the toys that I've ordered also is a set of sparkle (or star) filters (also from Neewer) which can add 4-, 6-, or 8-fold star to light sources in the image (separate from closing down the aperture to do that as usual), and also a bracket for dual flashes, and a mount for dual cameras or flashes as well (planning to use this for 3D anaglyph footage), and lastly, the item that I've ordered now for the 3ʳᵈ time (or 4ᵗʰ? Can't remember): Flash cord, to control the speedlite off-camera (and enable high-speed function as well).

晚上的客
(night's visitor)
a quick test for the kaleidoscope filter, coupled with 50mm lens.

Despite my many plans here to do stuff, but my brain was blank with ideas and also my time was occupied by fatigue, house problems, and personal problems. My need for a vacation is chasing me even in my retirement, when I'm supposed to have the time of my life and do whatever I wish to do without worrying about work, schedules and waking up in the morning (which, ironically, I still do, and need to do).

Among other "important" changes that I've made as well, is rolling out from a number of websites. I've stopped participating in Twitter (X) and YouPic, and even closed and deleted my account on MostPhotos, deleting all my images there, including the extra-large panoramas that I've uploaded exclusively there. With that, I'm coming back to Instagram slowly but not in the same way I used to do it years back. I'm not planning to chase everyone for likes, nor I do upload daily. Anyway, it is just one venting point for my work with photography from time to time. On the side, I've de-cluttered a big portion of my room, and I'm supposed to continue but the momentum waned out and I'm still trying to get some of my strength back now and then. All of that can be seen, I guess, from the fact that I didn't (and couldn't) post any blog posts for months (not counting the last post in June).

 

Finale

Один Мирный День
(one peaceful day)
Huawei

I think I can consider myself lucky now that I've had the time to type this blog post down after all these weeks. I still have to think about my Arabic blog on the other hand, which had been long stranded without any updates.
I've been lately, and for the past few days, to push myself to work with the camera further and I've done few humble shots using the prism filter already, but I'm preparing for some more work, but things are progressing slowly, especially with Mom being admitted to the hospital last week, which made life almost stop for me without clear thinking. Meanwhile, there had been snaps here and there with my Huawei, but I don't want to delve deeper into phonography and just forget about DSLRs and the work with them. Yet, there is no denying that having a phone in the pocket is mesmerizing and often helps in capturing those sudden moments in time, as the case with One Peaceful Day, but one has to also focus on the real work; that is, the work with DSLRs and trying to figure out new ways to be creative, instead of capturing moments here and there.
The harshest times of summer are over by now and this is a relief as it is. The weather is still hot for sure, but not as the past 3 months, and I'm dying here waiting for winter. Maybe then I can have some time for myself walking outside and snapping some pictures, even though I should think of going further away. As far as being out of this country altogether…

Camera Doodles…

Well, I think it had been one hell of a "vacation" from blogging, to blog. Did I stay away from this blog for 3 or 4 weeks? I can't recall really. All I remember is that in a week's time, I had so much going on in my life that I could barely sit in front of the PC and do anything except of checking the so-called "social media" (which I pretend that I have). I had some allergy attacks, and a slip on the stairs ending me with a twisted foot and a pain in the tail (or rather the muscles around that tail bone). Meanwhile, I was already engaged in typing a blog post for my Arabic blog, which made me stop everything at that point. On a positive point, I did work on a tiny experiment with high speed, but probably I shall post about that later on as I'm following some chronological order in this blog and I'm supposed to post something related to the infrared shot I've made before and talked about in the previous post.
Meanwhile, I think I'll be busy as well doing an "inventory check" for images from 2022 and 2021 (and maybe even 2020) to see what I can prepare of them to be uploaded to the stocks. This is a tedious task specially when ti comes to the keywording process. I've tried to find a tool to help me out with keywording time and again, but failed to find a suitable one. Anyway, for this reason, I might be away from this blog for another 2 weeks or so (providing that I don't slip on the stairs again!).

Camera Doodles

This sit of images is quite quick, and thus this whole blog post might be short actually. This set of images was taken the day after the shots in my previous post were taken. Not much was done in these images except of fixing an infrared filter on the lens (I think it was Neewer's IR720) and moving the camera around (indoors where not much IR sources exist). Ironically, my aim was to test something outside and check if there are "hidden" clouds in the sky, but nothing interesting was there, so I came back inside and started to shoot randomly at light sources.

شُـهُـبْ
(meteors)

Generally speaking, the images were red (of course) but I added some twist to it to make it purple and interesting. Indoors, most of the lighting in fixtures comes from LED lights; Not a significant IR source but apparently IR720 do let in some of the spectrum from these lights. Anyway, I've tried various movements between shots, and some images like Meteors have been rotated to make it interesting somehow. Even though it is an abstract in general but seems to me that the direction of the "tails" in such images is important; I could've also made the tails going from the top and downward and probably would still be representative of meteors falling down. Anyway, abstracts are abstracts and those coming up won't have a direction most of the time as we'll see.

Camera Doodles 1

As for the next 2 abstract shots I can't quite remember what orientation were they when they were taken, but apparently I wasn't pointing the camera towards some light source like the fixtures in Meteors. Looking at it, it might be suitable for some background but I'm not quite confident that the stock websites would be accept such images, as it looks quite random. Camera Doodles 2 looks even more random than Camera Doodles 1. 

Camera Doodles 2

My guess or let's say I hope that such images would be accepted for their colors rather than their "composition" (if such word applies here). When I come to think of it, I think the hardest part is to assign keywords to such images right now, as they are completely random! Even though some websites state that something around 20 to 30 words are just about enough, I got into the habit of not feeling satisfied in less than 40 words (probably affected by that time when I had an Alamy account some years ago). One thing though about Camera Doodles 2, and that is that I think I've applied some inverse somewhere in the process but not sure how or when!

Moving Door

The last in this series (and I've skipped one here which I will post at the end) and probably my most valuable shot here is Moving Door where I've set the camera on a table and manually rotated it as the exposure was to be taken (about 6 seconds). It did require some trials to do it right though despite its simplicity; Just the right angle and the right spinning speed. The door here leads to guest room and then to the outside so I'm guessing some bits of infrared are seeping through. Worth noting that the place was busy with people and good thing none (I guess?) appeared here. I think Moving Door has this sense of horror movies despite the floral design on the door. Surely will be keyworded for upload to the stocks.

Finale

So this is a short and quick post for some quick abstract shots done with an infrared filter on 50mm lens. I think my plan for the next few days from now is to work on some images and prepare them for the stocks. This will take some time so I'm not sure if I have the time to post here but we'll see. Meanwhile, I'm also trying to dedicate some time and effort to shoot something (anything) and probably I should also think of a proper topic for my Arabic blog for August. I've already skipped June!
On the other hand there had been some problems on Instagram as I've been trying to upload a video of my latest shots (which I will hopefully talk about here in the coming weeks). I've been trying to upload the video daily, and for more than one week, and kept getting some error message which doesn't explain a thing. I've issued a ticket but I didn't get a reply, yet the problem was resolved few days afterward, so I'm thinking that they did respond to the ticket. Too bad though I didn't take a picture of the set when I did this high-speed photo shoot but I might reenact it, though it's not a big deal I guess.

Meanwhile, I've been also thinking about participating in photography contests (from which my inbox is flooded with), specially after the closure of Trierenberg Circuit lat year (or was it this year?). Anyway, I'm not sure what I would be aiming for in such contests; Like, I'm OK with the money but not sure if it is worth it much. On the other hand, would I get some recognition? Again, what for. Anyway, the idea is still flipping in my head, left and right, and couldn't reach  decision about it, but I might as well participate in few of these contests. We'll see…

In relation to the so-called social media as well it felt being so isolated in the past 2 weeks. Despite the fact that I spend most of my time alone, but I had that urge to talk to someone, anyone, just talk... but there was none. Neither on this social media, nor in reality (from which I'm escaping I guess). It felt as if there was something broken inside my head, staring aimlessly and just doing nothing, and having a nap after another, with total fatigue. Funny how this social media which is supposed to help you grow your circle or do something about the stupidity of the social norm, in fact locks you down further in wait for anyone to reply to your comments or look at your posts and nothing happens for hours and hours. Just the ridiculous life I'm leading…

Tunneling

By A Candle…

Well, just when the holidays are over, here I am having a short vacation on my own just to rest at home and have some sleep! Anyway, at the time of posting this, this would be the last day of my actual vacation and I'm going back to work after the weekend. Luckily, there had been some activities, and ideas still on the go. But let's start first with those that I didn't post about 2 weeks ago.

Remains

Some weeks ago I got this idea, or maybe a recurring idea, of doing some cubism in combination with selfies. Of course, the best (and first) solution that occurred to me is to do that with my Huawei. But despite its relative easiness, I had some hard time shooting because I wanted to use the rear lens rather than the front lens, because the resolution is greater. I also, somehow, had better view using the rear lens and shooting a selfie while looking at myself in the mirror.

بقايا إنسان (Remains of Man)
Click to enlarge

One of the problems was the perspective while shooting and I had to re-do some of these shots and just hope for the best focusing possible without looking directly on the phone's screen through the mirror. Moving my head would change the perspective of course and this is what I was trying to avoid, right? I made several shots (I believe more than 10) but I didn't use them all in composing the final image بقايا إنسان (Remains of Man). The main idea was to figure out one image per part of the face, and since we are talking cubism (well, sort of) then I had consider even the plain areas of the face, like the cheeks and the forehead and I'm glad that I did so! The image you see here is a complete collage, i.e. the images were not pasted on an original image of a full face. But totally put together from separate pieces.
I have to admit that the idea of shooting cubism like that is still going on in my head. Originally, I wanted to do this with my brother (my typical model in such cases) but he was too busy to have some time for me, so I decided to do a selfie out of it, as usual. However, I'm still hoping that I can do more of such art and probably with a DSLR if possible rather than a phone camera. But is it worthy? The phone camera seems more flexible and way too easy to handle the job, but the grave downside about it is: No technical flexibility. I really shot all these slides to compose my face you see above without controlling anything; from light metering, to shutter speed, to aperture. All I had to do is click the shutter button (which I've set to my volume button). Such pros and cons need a bit of thinking I guess, then I'll be ready to pick my next victim!

Candle People

I've been working on doing something with my DSLR, after all that fuss that Huawei contest made for me, so it occurred to me to start slow a bit. I did some macro shots but I'll be talking about in some other post maybe; It was something small and not really that interesting. But what happened later on is the thing that sparked a project in my head.

Candle Selfie

 At some point, I had kind of a flashback about portraits (or rather selfies I should say) done with my modified 7D and B+W 092 infrared filter, namely a series I've called Candle Selfie. I thought then, what if I expanded the idea further, with a bit of modification too. A face, one candle for light, but this time with a profile of the face and not face-on. Technically, I decided to use the Neewer IR720 (that is with 720nm threshold) filter instead of my typical and old B+W 092 infrared filter (which has I think around 690nm of threshold). Maybe just for a change? Not sure. But probably just to stand away from the typical looks of the infrared selfies that I used to take before. Even though, while processing, the looks persisted. Anyway, I started off with myself of course.

Boihéamach (Bohemian)

One critical change in the process here is the usage of my 50mm lens instead of the 20mm lens which I used to take those candle selfies back in 2017. Increasing the focal length played a critical role in giving my life a hard time to take a selfie with no help from anyone :)
I tried to use my wireless solutions but holding the candle in one hand and the mobile phone (which runs the wireless app and connecting to my camera) on the other hand was really cumbersome and I had to drop that idea once and for all. I won't be exaggerating if it took me about 2 days of trials and errors until I shot Boihéamach in the traditional way (focusing on a monopod and then trying to stand in its place). I used to shoot in a dark room but then I realized that I'm shooting in infrared with somewhat a high threshold and the lights in my room were all LED or CFL, so I can shoot with lights on! Which I did and it made my life just a biiiit easier…

Boihéamach (details)

Despite working on my own, I was lucky in fact to get my eye into a sharp focus. I was so fascinated with the details that I've cropped the image later and made a separate image out of the eye alone. In processing the image (and the images afterward) I've emphasized the blue and the "pink" color of the inner eyelids and the lips by increasing the Vibrance up to 100%. I don't normally do such a thing but since we are going crazy with this trend, why not? The problem with this step is that it increases some apparent chromatic noise (typical to infrared images), specially that these were shot using ISO200 instead of the lowest, ISO100. I picked this ISO just to have enough flexibility with the shutter speed (which ranged between 1/6s to 1/10s for all shots, this one and later ones). This was about enough to freeze the motion and avoid motion blur (because of the body movement not the camera's of course) but still, problems were ahead.

Abdullah F.

So, the project started and I've been already calling family members (males mainly) to model for me. Working with family members is one of the hardest things to do and that made me think of seriously calling for some professional model, but I'm not going to spend money just like that on some experiments and ideas I'm going through; After all, I'm not still a professional photographer. Shots for some of my nephews like the one of the left here turned out good (relatively) but still made me think of more work to be done. For example in this shot for my nephew, Abdullah F., a large portion of the shoulder is apparent in the shot (and this is because I kept my camera and 50mm lens away), which was not the case with my Boihéamach shot (it was cropped but still not much and the shoulder did not show up in the original shot that much). In this shot of my nephew as well, it seems that I've kept the camera in a lower position; lower than his head level. Despite all that, I still like the shot here and I've worked on dodging the hair to add some delicate details on that part of the image. So, probably I shouldn't get my camera that close to the face and show some portion of the head and hair after all?

Jassim H.

Unfortunately, I was not lucky with the rest of the people I've shot and many of them are to be re-made, if possible. One of the hardest aspects here is not only keeping the person stable, but also to look straight instead of looking at the candle. Raising the level of the candle as well did not help much, and that kept some of them look down (apparently my "high" is not equivalent to their "high"!). Also, 1/8s was not quite enough for the shutter speed to freeze the body movement in some shots like for my nephew Jassim H., and using 1/10s left the image quite dark even at ISO200. Thinking of going over ISO200 was out of the question (in fact I've hoped to lower it down at some point but that did not help and made it worse so I switched back to ISO200). I told my nephew already that I have to re-do the shot, maybe next Friday.
I've taken other shots but I will post them later maybe. Some of them were good and some are bad and need to be re-done, so let's see how the next week will unfold. I've already lost hope in re-shooting some people because I've already re-done it and it didn't work any better!

Finale

I'm typing this in supposedly a short vacation (for a week) off work and believe it or not, I'm seriously lacking the time to do many things I want to do! My time is torn between having rest as much as I want and doing my routine daily chores (e.g. Duolingo exercises and learning). I'm typing this just in the final hours of Wednesday.
Things look foggy around my workplace. Moving to the new location, which would be quite problematic for me, is still foggy for me. Things are quite but sometimes it feels like the calmness before the storm.
This little vacation makes me think of a bigger and longer vacation at some other time. A vacation that I need to take, and a travel that I need to make. I'm looking at my panorama gear with some sorrow as I didn't use them for some time. Probably the last panorama I've shot was here at home back in 2018. However, the world is going crazy and that makes me reluctant to do much in that field. I need to get some habits back but it's hard to fit them into a schedule. Maybe I'm being a bit of a perfectionist and I shouldn't think or work that way? But again, if I leave these habits for long, I'd be losing them, maybe, forever; Like writing poetry which I didn't do much about for months. On the same line, I didn't also make any posts for my Arabic blog for months as well. Is it all because of the summer season? i really wish if this is the reason; At least I'd be having some hope that I will be active again next winter. Some hope…

InfraFestiva…

Well, I'm not sure if I should type this post but not typing it would make me absent for 2 weeks from this blog. My life had been a bit dormant lately despite the light work conditions and the lesser traffic jams currently - but thanks to the heat which leaves me exhausted most of the time and disturbed sleeping as well. Meanwhile, my mind has been kind of empty of ideas to work with except for few trials which I'm going to talk about here right now. I do deserve a little vacation though (on a personal level) since Friday is my birthday; So I'm signing for a day off on Thursday and I didn't want to type anything in this blog for this week specially for this! But oh well... let's see what horrible things I did the past 2 weeks…

Change of Perspective

Well, there had been some continuous work with texture-creating which I've posted about in the previous post (and this might continue for a time maybe) but I won't waste much time here talking about these abstracts and textures, but I prefer talking about something else.
I'm still on a roll trying some more experimenting with my new Neewer infrared filters, and specifically, the IR950 filter (which, supposedly, has a threshold of 950nm). I've showed some pictures in the previous post taken with this filter and how it did help on showing some veins in my hand (and foot to some extent), even though according to what I've found online, a threshold of 850nm is just as good for showing the blood vessels under the skin. Such shooting was done under the harsh sun to have a wide band of wavelengths in the range of infrared to get some nice results. Now it was time to change the perspective.
I was somewhat inspired by the medical field here, where some new inventions are coming out to help medics on checking the blood vessels under the skin using infrared beaming. Also, I did encounter some texts about using "infrared flash," where the flash is somewhat modified (or filtered) to issue only infrared radiation without the visible wavelengths! This is useful in a number of ways; Mainly, for not blinding people with my flash (my brother specifically!) when shooting for them in infrared, this is beside (and this is the greater advantage) using the camera and focusing in a normal regular way instead of struggling with the LiveView method which is a MUST when the infrared filter is placed on the lens (since it's opaque, it's impossible to use the viewfinder to check the scene). Using the LiveView has its (somewhat) disadvantages in my case because some functions do not work there and the metering method just changes drastically, in addition to the increase in handshake.

ExpoImaging Rogue Grid

Anyway, since my infrared filters here are circular and made to fit lenses, I had to come up with some way to fit them onto my speedlite here (while the gel filters are limited and I don't have a large enough piece to cover it). So, I thought of putting the filters inside ExpoImaging Rogue Grid System which I got long time ago (along with a full set of light modifiers). They fit with some gap but they do cover the bulk of the speedlite head. The main issue here, though, is that this method would direct the speedlite into a beam (because of the grid), and that might be problematic if the aim was for longer distances. Anyway, this would do for now.

Left: IR950.
Right: B+W 092.

Of course, the first target was to take a selfie using this method. The results were astonishing indeed. Color-wise, the results are similar to fitting the infrared filter on the lens actually, but there is a bit of difference here with the shot taken with IR950 filter. The one you see here had some increase in saturation but it's not quite the bright infrared shot I used to see when shooting a selfie (the eyes specifically); This result was weird but anyway I did put it to some good use!

The work was simple here: lighten the eye, and sharpen some more, and you got yourself a Werewolf. Anyway the question remains here as to why it showed like that while that did not happen exactly when using the B+W 092 infrared filter. After checking again and again, it seems that because of some gaps around the filter disk, some light from the speedlite itself did leak and thus giving some mix up between infrared and visible spectra (remember that we are using the filters on the speedlite and not the lens, so the camera really is catching everything on its way!). When I fitted these gaps, the resulting image was indeed like the one I usually get when placing the same filter on the lens, just like the case with the image taken with B+W 092. It's kind of a lesson here that being perfect is not always a good thing. The joy here was that it was all done without going blind because of the flash pulse into the eye or anything! That would help me greatly in some tasks (specially when I have my brother as a model; He is greatly annoyed by flashes).

Variety of spectra for various flashtubes.
Click to enlarge.
Source: Wikipedia.

My next target was to shoot the veins or blood vessels using a speedlite and IR950 filter. Even though it is somewhat common to use the threshold of 850nm for infrared beams dealing with blood vessels imaging, it seems that 950nm would add a bit more contrast to the matter. After all, I did try the IR950 already under the sun and it did show the veins of my palm! My trials, however, were in vain, and apparently, it is not the filter we are talking about here but the source of the infrared - And for that reason the sun works fine to show the veins but not the speedlite. According to little research I've done, Canon Speedlites use Xenon flashtubes, and the spectrum of such gas go downward (as seen in the diagram) around the value of 800nm (0.8 microns on the diagram). There are ups and downs in the graph but the bulk of the power seem to be in the range of 400nm to 600nm somehow. I'm not sure what is the intensity of the 580EX II speedlite compared to this diagram for Xenon flashtube, but the general scheme, as I believe, applies anyway; And probably speedlites are not the best infrared source to be working with when it comes to IR950 and some veins work! In fact, even IR850 which has a lesser threshold did not yield a clear image for the veins of the palm when used with the Speedlite. Thus in conclusion: Speedlites are not a good source for infrared when it comes to penetrating the skin to show the veins. Tungsten lamps, on the other hand, look promising from some test shots. Still though, I had some ideas to implement even with speedlites using IR950.

Source

In the beginning, my aim was to picture the blood vessels in my face (got inspired to do this after checking some anatomical images online), and ironically, I can't remember if the IR950 infrared filter was placed on the lens or on the speedlite. However, judging from the direction of the light in Der Erschöpfte, I presume the speedlite was on the camera actually and I think the filter was placed on the speedlite with some extra stuffing (probably duct tape around its circumference) to fill the gaps and trap the speedlite light. Anyhow, after taking several shots I've picked the one you see above to be my target for processing even though all of the shots didn't show any signs for blood vessels. In processing this image, I tried to keep the histogram in the dark region as much as possible without being cut off, and thus having minimal details in the shadows BUT not lost details in that region.

Histogram for Der Erschöpfte, with Adobe 1998 color space.

I like to be somewhat delicate sometimes when processing B&W images. Pulling the histogram to the left further to an extreme made some interesting touches of light on the nose tip and the eyelashes. Notice that the image would look a bit brighter than it should on some displays (I work with a calibrated monitor to ensure correction rendering for colors and luminosity). As I work on a PC and a laptop, I can see there is a difference in the looks; My laptop is not calibrated and I can see the background of the image here, while originally it is dark and hard to see any significant details, giving the image dark and mysterious look. It is amazing how I got my white-ish skin to be so dark with a glimpse of infrared! This experiment needs to be redone probably under the sun for better details if any (or is my face skin that thick?!). There is a holiday coming and after a period of turmoil at home because of renovations, I can get out and shoot some selfies in the sun with these filters and check the results.

Finale

Originally, there was so much I wanted to talk about in this post, like my experiments with hand-made pinholes, but I'll keep that till I get more material and more thought about it. I've been also trying to push my mind into poetry again but the words did not really accumulate into a single verse to be posted along. I hope words and ideas come together in the coming week, though. Beside that, I'm trying also to check some older images to see what new processes can be done (specially to those neglected images deemed useless before).

An Chathair Dhorcha (the dark city)
Infrared shot for Kuwait city done in 2015 and processed this week only.
Shot from the 60^th floor of Al-Hamra tower.

Arts away, I do have also some plans to "pamper" myself a bit, starting with a day off (today) as a gift to my own self for my birthday. I'm also planning to have some "adventures" of mystic nature, such as doing a palm reading (not the first time). Then, I'm off to a LOT of sleeping, and dreaming of some travels as well. I can have some days to myself just inside away from this harsh sun that cooked me alive already. Should my birthday be in such time? After all, I'm a Leo, and it's hard to complain about it…

Plethora…

With Summer course coming to an end, things are becoming quiet in my workplace, which is good. Now, if only I can turn this oven off for such a weather. The quiet time has come over to my activities with the camera as well, as I've finished documenting most of the small shells collection and I'm trying to do some experiments regarding an "artificial aperture" if I can call it so. No need to talk about it for now, and somewhat I feel it will fail but I didn't finish experimenting still as I'm typing these words.

Shellelagh

Well, I know, the original word is "Shillelagh" but changed here on purpose. In this section, I just would like to list some of the latest shell shots I've made; And some of them seem interesting. I think I did have another collection elsewhere but can't remember where did I keep it. Anyway, for the time being, I'm going to satisfy myself with this one and, who knows, maybe re-shoot it again at different angles or with different magnifications... etc.

I did mention in my previous blog post here that I had a problem with my Bolt LED ring light, and that problem was that it could not be fitted on Vello's macrofier which helps me on reversing the lens and achieve greater magnification at the least effort, and with better focusing range. Well, as you can see here, the problem seems to have been partially solved with some electric tape. I had to tape the edges of the adapter ring to the macrofier (and secure that with another strip of tape on the circumference of the macrofier). Only then, I was able to click the LED ring onto the macrofier. The situation was shaky, and the main problem was the quality of the tape itself; IT SUCKED big time. That's why I needed to secure it with a strip across the circumference. Anyway, I did take some shots in this setting and things were interesting as well!

The previous two shots were shot using this DIY solution with Bolt LED ring. Of course, at f/11, I didn't use the flash property of the ring, but rather kept it on (like a modeling light on regular speedlites and strobes) and each shot for the stack did take few parts of a second (still longer than 1/250s, the sync speed). Another problem rose up here is the bulkiness of the ring which sometimes made it cumbersome to do focus stacking at specific angles, but I blame that on the setting I'm having already to shoot these shells. As I get closer and closer to the shell, there is a chance that the LED ring light would hit the edge of the box or the table upon which the shell would be residing. All in all, it is a promising venue and I might find myself using it again to have somewhat balanced lighting around my subject, as well as some interesting luster as in Shell Fudge. The baby oil here did some good job. Anyway, after shooting these two, I was back to using my speedlite to shoot.

The main reason for switching back to the speedlite (with light bender attached to it) was to add some unidirectional light to give a sense of depth to the subject this time. The grooves on this shell, as can be seen in the documentation shot above, called for some depth. Not saying it won't be beautiful under a flat light like the one from Bolt but it is just the role of the idea, and I wouldn't be able to judge for real until I see the final results and compare between the unidirectional and the flat light. Anyway, after the documentation, it was the time to do some work, as usual, with focus stacking.

Because of the relative size of the shell, I didn't wish to go with extreme macro and lose sight of the fine lines here, so I just used extension tubes to get closer to the shell with my 50mm lens. Ironically though, it does seem to be quite a magnification (by looks) despite being less than 1x even! I think it is the power of Abstract. I can't remember how many shots were taken to do the focus stack for MacroPiping but the speedlite's main batteries were dying out already, and when I started to work with An Fathach later, it went down completely in the mid of my work. So, I had to satisfy myself with that much of shots and do the focus stacking for An Fathach at that level alone.

It was a good thing that I used baby oil here but in a different technique. Instead of dipping the shell, I used cotton swabs (those used to clean the ears) to pass the oil on the shell in every possible way. Adding to that, the shell was left for a relatively longer time than other shells before to be exposed before shooting it, and that somehow made the oil get "absorbed" or something. Anyway, the luster was not harsh like before because of this AND because of diffusing (using a paper) and using a relatively lower power for the speedlite (and somewhat raising the ISO a bit).  Well, despite the lower power, still, the speedlite died out as I was working on An Fathach! Worth noting here that An Fathach was worked out using the LAB technique to enhance and pronounce the colors further. This is all for the work with shells so far but I might work further when I find more shells hiding in my room or something! I'm sure I did have more those small ones.

Stroll

As it is quiet in my workplace, I decided to take my camera gear with me (minus the tripod) just to try the new Neewer infrared filters which I got a while ago. I didn't have much in mind to do really, but the shots I've made proved to be "awesome" in their own way, as it came clear later on.

One of the goals I had in mind, though, is to try to use the high IR filters (of thresholds starting from 820nm and beyond) to show the blood vessels. Showing the veins using IR is common now I presume in the medical field, but I'm talking here about mere photography using infrared filters. I tried to use the speedlites (well, more like the on-camera flash and high ISO) but seems it didn't work well. I thought, then, that we might need some higher intensity of infrared, and thus thought of shooting my own hand as you can see above, under the blazing sun around my workplace. Why my workplace? Well, this is the only time of the day that I have time, power, AND mood to work under the sun like that. After going back home I'll be completely exhausted and barely able to touch the camera even. Hand Veins was shot using IR950, which supposedly has a threshold of 950nm and the veins did show clear under the thumb (mount of Venus as they call it in palmistry) as well as some tiny veins around the index and the little fingers. The image above had been cleaned off noise a bit but still the veins look clear. 

I tried to shoot my own foot as well and see the veins, and they did show a bit actually but probably the distance didn't help here (using my Voigtländer 20mm lens here). The look was pretty interesting here; The black sandal turned white, the blue pants turned white, and the white nails turned black! I did take several shots trying out to adjust the focus (manual here, no AF) and eventually turned these shots into an anaglyph. The illusion of the depth is not bad either.

The remaining of the stroll spent on trying various infrared filters as well as the H-alpha (dubbed as "Night Sky" filter!). I like to call this filter a "weak infrared" since it works in the range of the Reds and infrared. Worth noting that all these shots were shot without calibrating the white balance in-camera, and all was done while processing the RAWs. 

While processing these test shots for IR750 and the H-alpha filters, I've increased the Vibrance of the colors intentionally to show the faint colors. Well, they were not so faint with the H-alpha filter in Alienizing but it was for the better. Moreover, channel swapping gave the leaves that distinctive reddish look and turned the sky blue. If I want to talk about those artistic infrared filters with their colorful look, I would say that the H-alpha filter is the one to pick for this mission here! My old B+W 092 infrared filter (threshold about 650nm or so) did render some colors as well but probably not to this degree. My stroll at work did not end there, though, and there was some more to come, but not till I had to go back home and check these test shots again and again.

Plethora

In that stroll at work, there were many test shots for other infrared filters like the IR850 and IR950 again and again and they were rather random. Some of them were even out of focus a bit (ir's hard to focus using LiveView under the harsh sun). However, it was a chance to play!

I'm not sure how things started with this play, but probably I was under the influence of the Islamic geometrical arts (naturally, I'm fond of them but never practiced them). I've been reading about some of the details of these creations, particularly in Andalusia, and I do follow already some artists who perform such arts (and they are not Arabs nor Muslims). It is mesmerizing indeed, the way of combining those abstract lines and then create complex regular patterns out of such lines. Frankly, I could never understand it. Anyway, all I have here is simply Photoshop and a single photo in front of me, with which Octuplum Abstracta and other patterns or textures were made. In fact, I already envision Octuplum Abstracta as a design on a tile or ceramics of some sort and used for building. Not sure how this is done and how it's possible but if I can I would. This actually lead me further to more abstracts, starting with Octuplum Abstracta just to envision how a tiling using this design or abstract would look like…

The result is mesmerizing. I wish now if I have a room (or even a bathroom) with this complexity (with maybe some vibrancy to the colors added). The possibilities are endless, and you can still get some regular shapes and lines with every setting you might think of; Just like in a kaleidoscope.  All of that was just from a single photo alone, but yet I had to check other photos as well (mainly those which I couldn't make out something out of).

While Octuplum Abstracta was somewhat random in its creation, Black Magic was not. Not completely but I did have this idea of creating a 16-fold star or polygon out of the photo, unlike the eight-fold done in Octuplum Abstracta. I did read that 16 points stars in the Islamic geometrical designs are not common, and probably those of 24 points are even more scarce. Thus, I've set my mind on creating 16-fold polygon out of this photo and so the work on replication and arranging the copies of ONE image were all somewhat calculated and not random completely. I can't remember even what was the original photo! In Black Magic, I inverted the colors by the end of the work and it proved more dramatic than its original almost dull blue or cyan color (typical color for processed infrared images). I was not disappointed. Now this design, I envision it to be on some sort of fabrics as well as ceramics. I don't have a commercial mind unfortunately, but these 3 abstracts above are uploaded and accepted already in a number of stock websites like Canstockphoto, Dreamstime, 123RF, as well as Mostphotos. I might even consider working on some old photos to create abstracts and textures, but I also have to make sure not to forget about my camera and to do some original photos as well (which I'm trying hard during these days as well).

Finale

I've probably talked about this poem which I was thinking of jotting down in my previous blog post, and after some hard mental work (with the help of some randomness from some brainstorming websites) I did pin down something, which I've callled Smashed. 

Smashed

The poem was originally inspired by the looks of a shell as I was doing my work on documenting them (as you can see on the left). I loved its shape, its colors (channels swapped here) and the stripes, despite all the breaks and holes in it. I think it even lost its topmost tip. Yet, it still looks beautiful. I was moved and I have to say that I don't usually get moved by a static object like this and typically I would need more to ignite my writing appetite. But well, let's say challenge accepted. 

Smashed

Common as it appears to most
an apogee had never risen up
But how often obviously hidden
truth of matters out of a sudden
Beauty need not to boast.

Such as a Palestinian home
deprived, and setting off a ghost town
Attitude never deemed it hollow
on the struggles, it has to follow
A home sweeter than Rome.

A rider over the heart-breaks
mending it life-long as you are
By the cracking, the shimmering glow
elegance, of hope, of which you show
Despite the mistakes.

In swiftness pass over my cheek
the glamour, and all that keeps me warm
By the touch, which in holes is filled
and by sweetness which you've fulfilled
Smashed and so is unique.

The rhyming scheme here is ABCCA. I've stated before that I use Verse Perfect to write poems and it has many aids including rhyming styles, yet ABCCA is not one of them. I'm not sure why I picked this style really but probably things were initiated in that way from the beginning of the writing (typing) process. I did find some samples on the internet as I was searching for more information about this style, yet it didn't really have a name it seems and samples of such a rhyme are rare (in my case I've found only one). Yet, after reading it further and further, I might apology with some regret for the (B) part in the rhyming scale; Probably should have turned it into (A) to be AABBA. But is not that rhyming scheme so common? The rhyming here is not the end of the story actually. The hardest part for me was to keep a static syllable count for the verses as much as possible, and that was kept at (8,9,9,9,6). I'm not sure if readers usually pay attention to the count of syllables when they read poetry, but my thinking is that keeping them concrete and static does help the harmony in some way, specially if the syllable count was the same between supposedly rhyming lines.

Putting this now, I'm still working on some pinhole experiments, which unfortunately didn't work out well till now but in hope that I might be able to post about it in 2 weeks or so. We'll see. I do need to write a poem as well. Many feelings are there in the air but it's just the time needed and the focus to pick up one of these seeds and grow it in a soil of thoughts; Plus the work of course. 

In a bit more than 2 weeks from now, my birthday is coming and I'm turning 38. Ironically, at this age, I don't know where I'm going or heading. With all the blessings I have, despite the things that swing my mood like a golf club, I'm still unable to focus nor really enjoy what I have. Not sure why, but maybe I'm tired of everything? I know that I have a lot of things to be thankful for, yet I feel there is something missing that without it, all is nothing. Probably this is what they call Midlife Crisis? I don't know. Travel, travel, travel... if only I know when or how, or where to. A change of scenery is long due and I can't do anything about it yet…

Breathing Still…

Flipping through my activities as the summer goes on and on... and on. With a sigh, I just can't wait for it to be over. It is just the beginning of July now, but we had our share of dust storms and humidity which leaves me wondering what is left for August and the rest of July already?! My body is typically exhausted more because of the change in temperatures between indoors and outdoors. Ah, and mentioning dust, I didn't let this opportunity pass without something to do. I remember one time I did shoot a panorama in a dusty weather, and this time I did use the dust to my "amusement" again; With the help of the microscope. The same old junky microscope.

Dusty

The frequent waves of dust lately reminded me of some of my studies back in the days when I was in college. In geology classes, specially those related to mineralogy, we used to work with reflective microscopes to check specific properties of the minerals. One of those most important features was to find the refractive index, if I remember correctly, which could help greatly in identifying the mineral at hand. That feature was investigated using polarized light. All of these information was somewhere there in my mind and I thought: Why not?
Things are not similar, of course, between the situation in classes with prepared mineral sample and the dust at home with an old junky microscope. However, it was an interesting encounter nonetheless. I started by collecting a dust sample from the outside during the "storm" (the wind is not always strong enough to be called a storm though, so I prefer the term "dust wave"). The collection was done using a paper cup (though I really wanted something bigger) and leaving it outside for about one day or a bit less. Tiny amounts of dust accumulated there, so I washed the cup a bit with distilled water (the type used for car maintenance) and poured a little on the glass slide. Couldn't wait for the water to evaporate, so I placed a lamp (tungsten) close to the slide to dry it out and leave the residue only. And that's it! The sample was ready! All is left is to secure it with a glass cover glued with nail polish.

Dust Sample - 40x
Mobile shot.

First, I wanted to mimic the method of the reflective microscope as we used it the labs back in the day, and actually this is somewhat done by force; Because having a light going through the sample yields nothing but silhouettes! So, I had to close the aperture below the stage and move the light source (desk lamp with LED) a bit upward to shine the light over the surface of the slide and it worked like magic! To my surprise, the dust sample was not made of... dust! There were strange particles looming around and some round objects which might be pollen (and this is quite natural); But what about those other hard stuff? I did check dust and mineral samples before during my studies and I can definitely say this is nothing like it! Now imagine we are breathing this...

Dust Sample (51.2x)
Canon EOS 7D

After a simple mobile shot, it was the turn for more serious work with the DSLR. My main interest was this portion of the sample where a spherical object appears; I'm guessing it is pollen. Not sure though. For beginners, I kept my the magnification power low since going deep would squander about lot of details. Thus, I worked first with my usual 50mm lens in reverse (providing about 1.28x magnification) in combination of 40x (total) in the microscope, thus yielding about 51.2x in total magnification. Then, it was time to move to a higher level.

Dust Sample (660x)
Canon EOS 7D

On the next level of magnification, I've changed the lens to Voigtländer 20mm, which gives a magnification power of about 3.2x when reversed alone (using Vello Macrofier), but there is a little catch here. Extension tubes.
Adding extension tubes with this lens on reverse yields about 6.6x. Now this, combined with 100x on the microscope, yields about 660x! Probably for a reader these number don't mean much, but for someone working with a microscope AND a digital camera, it does make a difference, simply because framing the object of interest (our spherical body here) would change because the scene is under more magnification power. Thus, even after fixing the scene in the microscope with the naked eye, it would be adjusted again in terms of focus AND framing (by moving the glass slide on the stage of the microscope), which is quite a tedious work to be done. As expected here, the image quality at such a high magnification is not quite "sharp" or interesting as it was in lower magnification but it was just about enough to show those details on the surface of this spherical object which looks like the surface of Mars! I'm not sure if any of the stack images were shaken a bit during the making of the 660x image, but surely the color aberration and other distortions have their own effect on the quality of the image. I tried to reduce as much as I can and sharpen the image (after minimizing it).
As I've stated earlier, I was trying to mimic the work of a reflective microscope with this old piece of junk. Thus, I gave it a go and tried using a polarizer BUT on the lens (which was hard to control while fitted into Vello's Macrofier). Anyway, nothing interesting appeared and no change in the light level at all. I think the polarizing effect must be applied to the light source itself rather than on the lens receiving the light rays. I have also tried to shoot in infrared (just a quickie one) but, again, nothing interesting happened and the image was just in B&W and no additional gains. Now after this "little" work with this sample, I'm somewhat feeling the urge to collect more samples of dust (since we are on a roll here) or maybe work further on this very same sample looking for other features in it; I did see some stuff that might be of interest!

Escaping Still

Just felt the need to add this section as a continuation for the post about the panorama I did few weeks ago. After completing the "regular" projection, I started stitching some other projections, and for the most part, I didn't bother myself in correcting the stitching errors as I'm not planning anything "big" with those projections; Yet.

Escape The Shining

I did a number of stitches but I won't bother listing all of them here, but I'd rather just show those which I think have some potential, like the one above, Escape The Shining. This one was done using Mercator vertical projection, with a twist, and I quite prefer it over the regular vertical projection. I still, though, regret the fact that I put the sofa to block the entrance which appears here in the upper left corner; It could have been all black and thus adding more to the symmetry and balance, I believe.

Planeta Effugium

But probably the most beloved of all the versions I've made out of this panorama is the little planet projection, Planeta Effugium. Originally, it was less interesting really, but yet more plausible than its predecessor, the tunnel projection (the invert of this one). However, once I decided to play a bit and see the results, I got shocked somehow when I inverted the colors and the whole scene became like a negative slide. To add a bit to the twist, I've eliminated this inversion effect from the hand and the black space, the whole scene is somewhat a mix between original and inverted colors. I've also tried to make the whole image as a pure B&W but after many changes and fluctuations, I decided to leave it as it is and hence it became a bit red and yellow when colors were inverted (originally it had a hint of blue).

IR950

Well, IR950 is the name of one of the infrared filters I've got lately; A product from Neewer. The set of 4 filters was pretty cheap that I still can't believe they do really do some infrared work! But well, seems it works well so far. Except that, apparently, the make is not tight enough and the glass is shaking by now. I'm quite interested in this filter specifically because of its presumed property: threshold of 950nm. Which makes even higher than Kodak's infrared gel filter (87B) which has its threshold at about 820nm (or 830nm? Oh well). The 87B class of filters of such threshold are sometimes called X-Ray Infrared filters (just a mockery) for how they sometimes expose features under specific fabrics (with certain thickness of course), and this name was actually used in Neewer's title for this set of filters. These filters can also yield interesting results when shooting the skin, as they can show traces of veins, and this is something I need to work on a bit.

Sample shots done with IR950.

I've been testing all the filters in this test but I had a keen interest in IR950 as I said before. For fun, I started shooting (with the camera!) family members using the on-camera flash and raising ISO to the max point (12,800), as well as a quick selfie. Despite the high ISO, cleaning the images (in small sizes) was reasonable and some sharpness was added as well. Usually high ISOs, specially with cameras of cropped sensors like mine, produce a muddy-looking images, but probably the case is also different when it comes to infrared photography (even though classically, infrared images are known for their grainy soft look). The interesting thing here is: Usually, calibrating the white balance in-camera would not quite fix the problem with Photoshop when editing the RAW file. I'd still need to change the camera profile in Photoshop to Infrared profile in order to compensate for the limitation in the color temperature and tint in Photoshop. However, RAW files of shots done with IR950 do not behave that way despite being clearly infrared. They do appear as they were shot in-camera without any modification. Saying this, I just realized that I didn't check how the image would appear shooting with this filter WITHOUT calibrating the white balance in-camera.

A Nose With Personality
Collage.

I like the tones of blacks and whites even before editing them in Photoshop; They attract attention, as well as fear at some point because of the contrast maybe, and that adds more surrealism to the subject I presume which triggered me to do this "funny"collage of my selfie and my brother's face in A Nose With Personality. In fact, some people did indeed state that it IS scary rather than just a funny surreal image! While bring on a roll, I didn't want to miss the chance to test this filter with a panorama of course.

The Pano-Work

Seeing how the sun shines through a window pane over the stairs at home, I got triggered to try to do something about this. I did in fact shoot many simple shots before and recently for this play of sun beams over the steps, but now it was time to put my IR950 to some good use and see. A panorama.
Now, because IR950 is a circular filter and must be attached to the lens front, I had no choice but to use my next option for panorama shooting; The Voigtländer 20mm lens. I've tested this lens before in shooting panoramas, and at the regular settings of my panorama-head (shooting at every 30 degrees and counting as much as 12 shots per circle) and generally speaking, not many stitching problems occurred. However, the displacement between one angle and another with such lens is quite large and for this, to avoid any mishaps in working in such narrow space like the stairs, I changed the setting on my panorama-head to 24 degrees, making a total of 15 shots per circle. This change is not only done to the horizontal swipe, but also to the vertical swipe as well; Instead of shooting at every 45 degrees up and down, this was changed to 30 degrees (thus shooting at 30 degrees AND 60 degrees, and finally 90 degrees if needed). Wander with your imagination and think of such amount of shots we need to complete one scene: (15x5)+2= 77 shots for one scene, and we are not speaking of HDR yet!

Ghosted

The first problem, in practice, was to settle the camera down on such stairs and make it balanced as much as possible. I can't say I've done this perfectly but I was hoping on fixing the issue later on when assigning the horizon line and fixing the vertical lines before stitching the panorama. However, another problem occurred here unfortunately; Many shots were featureless and could not be connected to others in the scene -and this somehow made me wish that I worked with the old settings of my panorama-head but it's too late now- and finally, I had to satisfy myself with some of the scene and cropping the rest that simply didn't work and stitch properly. You can see that I've added some sandals and shoes in Ghosted, as my main idea was actually confrontation but seeing how the tones turned out as typically as they are for this filter, I've changed my mind and let my mind wander to its darker side in assigning a title to this.

Ghosted II

Not being a full panorama means there are limitations in projections and looks I can achieve with this panorama. For a try, I've used the vedutismo style in Ghosted II which added depth to the center while, supposedly, keeping straight verticals. To add drama a bit here, I didn't convert the panorama to B&W like its first predecessor, but rather inverted the colors like I did before in Planeta Effugium with some twist in blending to keep some areas original without inverting their colors. Yet more, I added some touches to improve the spooky look, like applying radial blur to an extra layer and blending it with soft light.
This is all to it for the time being and after this experience and this number of shots involved in this work, I might consider switching back shooting in 30 degrees with Voigtländer 20mm despite the hazard of having misplaced features or features not connected between two successive shots. This is of course when need arise.
On the other hand, there is still some thoughts and ideas I need to check about this filter and I do not have the capabilities to test it with. Like, does this filter really have a threshold of 950nm? After my bad experience with Tiffen's hot mirror, I hesitate to trust whatever the specs from the manufacturer say about the product. There is also the issue of the infrared source. According to Neewer's guideline, they propose each filter of different threshold to be used for specific conditions (and in dedication to landscape photography) with IR950 to be used under the harsh sun. This, however, doesn't work with me that way for sure and I need to explore my options with infrared sources and how do they react with the subject at hand; Specifically, the skin and whether the infrared source under question is good to show the veins under the skin in a photo, or penetrate specific fabrics (or even night vision as some claim). So much to discover with this filter alone, not mentioning the others as well.

Finale

I could've made the story longer here and talk about my shell collection and going back to documenting them but I think it is enough for the time being. I'll leave the issues of these shells for another time. There are more shells waiting to be documented.
Meanwhile, as I'm typing these words, I'm thinking seriously of leaving the Instagram community and gain some of my peace of mind (and more time to do other things), but the main issue here is the ridiculous updates and changes that Instagram comes up with every now and then. I'm still considering the idea though and didn't decide for sure yet. There is the issue of exposing and displaying my images to the public but probably it is not much of an impact, since I'm not getting many Likes on Instagram as well not comments; Thanks to some relatives and random visitors who appreciate what I do (or simply do it as a duty when it comes to my relatives).
There seems to be so much on my plate; Ideas, projects, experiments… yet seems I'm not doing much with them. I blame it on the summer and the heat that brings down all my strength but let's face it; I'm lazy after all. During this time, I'm waiting for my new passport to be issued, but would I really travel? I don't know. No plans whatsoever.
In poetry, I do have some words visiting and going and I'm really trying to force myself on writing it down. I just need that glitch in time between work and home (and responsibilities at home) to focus on writing. Unlike photography, writing coherent words and translating feelings on a paper (or typing them down) is probably as exhaustive as shooting a photo, or even more at times. Mentioning poetry, I was surprised that one of the poems that I've posted on Writing.com did get the 1st place award and a ribbon (with some award points with that). It came as surprise to me since I'm not checking my email in that website regularly and totally forgot about that contest within the website. Probably I've posted that poem here before, but I'm posting here again to finalize the post and leave you with it for reading it at your own pace, if you like!

Aman Aman

Not black and white but splashing colors,
worldly, such a never ending course.
No left, no right, nor wrong or even just,
aman aman, nor my mind I can trust.

Aman aman, O trembling Bulbul,
tweeting loudly in a funeral?
How does your spirit work I wonder indeed,
for seldom a smile had been in my need.

Seldom does it shine, if would, it could,
for sorrows I never understood.
O Bulbul to whom the tweet and the dance?
or maybe a salute to some past romance?

Salute me by the morn or by noon,
whether under the heat or the moon.
Take this core where it never had befitted,
in hope! May my grinning face be permitted.

When the blooms of May may surrender,
and off life bereft be the tender.
Lull me O Bulbul, and put me to sleep,
Aman aman, my eyes need not to weep.