Alexander 2, V6. Last.

Relatively a quite day, except of the smelly canned fish samples that I had to prepare. Thank God I didn't puke after all!
I brought my camera today as well for no apparent reason, and since I'm leaving in 30 minutes of writing this post, so I think I won't do any photography for today. However, it was nice to try my filters out yesterday on the roof with the beginning of the night at around 6:00 p.m. local time, when the moon was just raising and Mars was apparent as a red dot to the south of it. There was a bright glowing spot to the right of the moon as well but I can't tell which planet is this, and I say planet because stars usually are not that sparkling in the city.
I wanted to make a study about my filters and make an estimation of how much light they can block, but anyway I find that is difficult for the many factors involved, but rather I found out some useful sites that explain some aspects of the filters, and I've found out that Cokin (the manufacturer of my filters) seem to provide only 3 types of filters: ND2, ND4, and ND8, but there are lot of others out there that reduce the light more than this specially for the long exposures. The numbers after "ND" denote how many times the light is reduces, i.e. 2 reduces the intensity to its half, and 4 reduces to the quarter and so on. There is ND64 and ND1000, but they seem not made as a flexible filter as I'm hoping for, but rather as a fixed plate to be screwed int othe lens, and this one is expensive. However, I might be able to induce such effects by stacking the ND8 filters altogether, but at the current time, I have only one. It was such a mess that I couldn't take a picture of the moon from the roof with my telephoto lens (simple one: 55-200mm) which zoomed nicely for the moon surface and showed the spots (but I had to do this manually since Automatic Focus tend to be problematic with darkness all around the scene). Alas, the light coming from the moon is so strong that makes such a glowing spot, and I have no adapter for this lens diameter. Anyway, I didn't think of speeding up the shutter speed, so I hope I can check for today. The main aim for my experiment yesterday is to see my ability to catch long exposures and make a trail of an object, but that was not so successful with my recent grasp of NDs. Instead, I took successive pictures with my 18-55mm lens (which did not zoom to the moon at all but only showed a glowing star with flare), with my ND filter fixed on it and each shot was exposed for 30 seconds. Thus, and for ten minutes, I came up with 20 or 21 successive shots. I stacked the images in Photoshop and blended them together and it showed a trail somehow but not good at all. Well, I was happy that at least I find the moon moving!
I have some ideas for now about the nature of light and how to use the filters, yet, this will be improved by experimenting. More cash needed I think for more tools... and books!
__________

Alexander did understand the test of his Lord
thus with a point from his hand ordered an attack
While Chinchán's Son, Wirchán took the lead
seeking the revenge and chasing The Kákhbár
The armies met, just like a fleet of locusts
nothing can be seen but blood and heads
While the ringing of metals deafened the ears
and the shouts of agony and wrath filled the air
Alexander was not any less with his fierce heart
knocked down the heads reaching for his Karnagod
Finally they met together amid the twirl of blood
shield to shield, sword to sword, and eye to eye
Yet though the fear among the army of the hero
the grace of the Lord was revealed down on them
And when Wirchán seized the head of his enemy
did Alexander plant his sword, and Karnagod no more
Thus, when the men of Geltáns heard of the disaster
ran like insane in every direction seeking refuge
But many of them were seized and captured
and prisoners they became with dignity no more
After war, the peace and the belief spread over
and Alexander assigned his men to hold this land
Wirchán and Dómí held the matters of this
one of the north, and one to the south of West

Alexander 2, V5.

One heck of a night and a day, that was yesterday. A headache and a high blood pressure that accompanied me all the way to my bed time. I slept earlier (or let's say tried), but yet kept on waking up. I took one Cataflam pill at the end just to knock me off and sleep for 3 hrs before raising up again to go to work.

Had a chance yesterday to snap a a picture from some junk thrown beside my work place. The image reflects my feelings about those people who glue their butts to their thrones. Despite all what they do, they remain stupid in the eyes of others and behated.



As you see, I called it the King of Chairs. The hard part was to fix the blue chair on top and make it remain there. When I did so (hardly) with some broken metal pieces from other chairs, the wind started to rotate the base. Usually I like such chairs but not in this condition!
The shooting was mainly to experience my ND filters that I've just received. I fixed the ND4 Grey filter and started to shoot, and then removed it and shot again, then I changed the angle and shot again then fixed the filter and shot back. Of course each session was for 3 shots to combine as HDR. At the end, I joined 6 RAW files for the HDR make up. This gives me an idea in fact about studying the relation between the exposure value, time and the ND filter type. I might do this soon to study how the long exposures (bulb mode) photography work with ND filter and what do I need exactly to eliminate the excessive exposures as much as possible in day time photography.
In photoshop,  I opened my HDR and started on fixing some coloring. Personally, I like the first version of the image (which was combined into HDR in Photoshop itself) because of the high contrast between the blue chair and the yellow wall, and also the darkened purple floor. All of these were fixed by adjustment layers in Photoshop before tone-mapping. Unfortunately, after saving the file, and for some reason I don't know, the original EXR file got grey spots all over the image (and seems I've pressed some wrong key with all that headache in my head!). However, I combined the images again and worked on the second version with Photomatix. Of course, the second version of the image MUST go to photoshop for some tiny adjustment with the contrast and sharpening and then small-sizing to hide some artifacts.
That's it for now and I'm still waiting for the reply of Bigstockphotos!
__________

The fierce eyes met with the frowned faces
while Chinchán exchanged the show of power
There was Kákhbár, standing there beside the king
a valour general, mercy has no landing into his heart
His drink was the blood, and his food was the flesh
and his jokes were made of spears cut into the throat
Then with a loud voice from the horizon did it appear
Chinchán shouted from afar at the so called Kákhbár
"We heard of a mass of muscles, and a heart of stone
a man called Kákhbár the hero, and I doubt if it is so"
The glorious Geltán had his blood violently out from him
and shouted back with words that no one understood
He walked alone to the field and everyone was watching
while Chinchán was there waiting for him with pride
Two heavy things were meeting at that time of old age
if not men, then it is free for others to imagine the beyond
Copper and Iron, no difference in color they have now
but similarities they hold in the sound they do when beaten
Strike by strike, they exchanged the power so fiercely
everyone saw the fire coming out from swords and eyes
If it was not for a mistake in the steps of Chinchán
his head wouldn't be a target to be splitted into two
Just then the Geltáns released the shout of ego
and the knees of Caqobians shivered of fear

Alexander 2, V3.

Welcome to my world of MONDAYS. In the news today we have many problems:
1. Waking up at 2 AM and going to work in the morning without sleeping.
2. Having to wander around the labs because of stupid sockets and no water in some labs to wash the tools.
3. Visitors that I had no mood for.
4. Going to DHL and getting stuck in the traffic jam and barely finding a parking place later on (I parked in a mid-lane really and not a real parking place).
5. Being screwed from a colleague.
6. Did I tell you that I crushed into a wall a bit yesterday? Well, it wasn't Monday but it was an introduction to Monday.

The good part is, I picked my shipment and I got my 3 filters now with an adapter and a filter holder. Yesterday when I went to the DHL facility, there was nothing but a single "folder" like thingy with some stuff inside. I opened it to see a ND2 (neutral density) filter only lying there! The whole shipment for 99% of the order just arrived today! Anyway, lot of work to do later on to experiment with these new tools. This is supposedly to help me out with long exposures in BULB mode. In such situations, the images tend to be blown out by the exposure, thus you have to limit the light as much as possible (specially in daylight photography).

No activity so far with the pictures from Ireland, as I'm taking some time to play some games, and at work, I get myself busy with some machines and with the transliteration of Alexander's VI story. I was hoping though to take some photos today of some scene around the campus but I was so busy in "work" that I didn't think about it for now. Anyway, it's going to be a picture of some garbage. That's all!
By the way... I hate Mondays...
__________

The army of the hero with twelve generals stood firm
before the walls and the gates of Galatanga the bold
A might city and mighty walls, and mighty men
not countable from the distance, but hard and tough
Alexander sent a messenger before him with a letter
and he approached the army with a raised hand above
He showed them the letter high up, and signed for peace
and asked to meet the king to reveal the tidings before him
The king was there, on a throne carried by six slaves
among his men, and enjoying the view of his kingdom
The king with a point from his finger made all silent
and pointed to the messenger to read his tidings
The messenger went on with no fear to read on
"From Alexander, king of the Caqobians,
To Karnagod, king of the Geltáns,
after the proposal of peace that we came for,
We invite you to worship the One, and the Only,
the Lord of Heavens and Earth and the beyond
And shall you make peace, we are for the peace
yet, mischief would be in your demeanours
Thus, you dug for your people their graves"
and the king went fierce with reddish eyes
With a point of his finger to some guards
the innocent messenger was cut into pieces

Alexander 2, V1

It is not an usual thing to post in this blog in weekend days, to me at least, but here I am after finishing the stitching for the Dome's picture. It was not an easy task anyway!
Coming to some calculations and after downloading the RAW images from my camera, the shots run over 21 angles (20 continuous in a circle and the last one was a zenith), and in each angle I had to shoot 3 times with exposure bracketing, thus 3 x 21 = 63! Ta da!

The composition was not easy and I had to try many times in the past 2 days because of my damned memory limitations! All of that happened when my stitching program did not work wonders as usual and there was some mis-alignment in the layers, and working in OpenEXR in 32 bits is not an easy task for my memory. I wanted to resolve the matter with Photoshop but yet, the results were even worse because nothing could be accomplished with such memory. At the end, with some tweaking in the software itself I was able to produce some decent image with less errors and the output was saved of course in EXR format as well;



The above images (when enlarged) can look a bit of cumbersome with some spots in colors, well this is mainly because I saved it as a GIF to keep the transparent background and keep the image circular completely without any white background. Of course I couldn't be able to submit a GIF to stock sites so they are saved as JPG as well. However, there are 2 versions here because I worked with manual tone-mapping in Photoshop (the bright one) while had a trial with Photomatix (the darker one). I've submitted the two currently to stock sites, you wouldn't know what people want. In tone-mapping (specially the manual one) you can produce many different aspect from a single image. I might go over with a third trial as well with a different method.
As I prmised before, here is the second part of Alexander's story. To make it a bit longer, I shall put only a verse at a time. Today it's Part 2, verse 1.
__________

It is the morning and its glory that began
and Alexander viewed his armies from the balcony
The sun's heat was heavy on the heads and metal
and the brave hearts were looking to the balcony
Whispers became obvious, and then into shouts
the hero raised one hand high into the heaven
With a glance of sun's ray over his fingers
the crowds kept silent like preying wolves
The Alexander started the speech with praises
for the Lord of earth and Lord of heavens
Then announced the beginning of the journey
of hardships and agony, under the Eyes of God
And by the commandments of the Almighty
the crowd of armies headed to the west
Into some lands they have never seen
into some lands they have never heard of
And the time had come now to go ahead
and all shall be heading towards the west
And although the graceful mother of the hero
wept and wept until her eyes became white
By the grace of God he calmed her down
and she understood no one here shall be left
For the Earth is nothing but a revolving wheel
of happiness and agony, of life and death as well