What The Heck?

What the hell is going on??? This winter is just a puddle of murky water which doesn't move! No activity, just a dormant life and busy busy mind and technically like a paralyzed person who can't reach out for his camera. There are good points however in this time of the year but still I didn't achieve what I was aiming for! I didn't go out to do some photography at night; my favorite time, in my favorite season of the year!
Anyway, in the meantime, I've been busy doing some other work here and there (mostly in front of the monitor here) and specifically working on posts for my Ayvarith conlang on Instagram. It's not only to spread the word about Ayvarith, but it is also for me to revive my memory a bit! Needless to say how much I did forget about the Bulughman and how the Geltani is on hold again after doing a tiny progress few weeks earlier. Also, I've been working on exploring some of the old panoramas, specially those from Ireland in 2010 from Cashel and Cahir in Co. Tipperary. There had been some inspiring results!

Manach ag Damhsa
(the dancing monk)

One of the first trial was the Hore abbey panorama from inside the abbey. I chose this specifically because of the architectural features and specifically the ceiling which had some Gothic-like or Celtic-like design and when stretched out it is more likely a resemblance of St Brigit's cross!
I had a theory before that places with ceilings specifically are more adequate for such twisted panoramas done in Mercator projection; I think Manach ag Damhsa proves this fact. This panorama got a lot of positive feedback and my group displayed it in the group's gallery account on instagram (@bpf_gallery). The pillars here really played a great deal in making a swift-looking movement. Without those pillars it would have been probably a dull twist. I've previously done something similar, a vertical panorama for this specific scene, but it was slender and the sides had to be chopped off.
Anyway, these panoramas were done in the beginning of my journey in photography back then and it wasn't really an easy to ask to "redo" them again. There were some awful mistakes and some "smudges" where something went wrong in the exposure for that particular slide or HDR image in that angle; some were treated, some were not, simply because I didn't know what the HELL was going on there!

Ar an Snámh
(afloat)

For example, in Ar an Snámh the already-stitched panorama had somewhat like a doppelganger! The abbey had virtually some shady building behind as if covered by fog. Looking closely, I've realized these were stitching errors. I don't know how it did happen, but I surely had no time to fix all of that. Thus, I've just stitched it and made a small size out of it for display here. it is a nice effect I believe; gives an impression of fantasy and surrealism. Could be a good option for some panorama maybe (specifically those with open top, or those which got no ceiling). Some panoramas, also, showed that annoying problem of color patches which I still don't quite know what causes it, and apparently I didn't have the time to redo all the HDR merging again and stitching again. Thus, the natural option was to convert to B&W.

Gairdíní Crochtaí
(hanging gardens)

I'm not so attracted to this one; Gairdíní Crochtaí in fact never was in other forms to tell the truth. Probably the best to be is just a flat spherical panorama for this scene. To get rid of those annoying colored spots, I had to convert to B&W (and even then I had problems with tones). It was a great deal of work here trying to show some details and hide some, keep some details dark and lighten some. Some patches or zones in the panorama had a smudging problem which was hard to resolve before stitching and after that, thus again converting to B&W was the solution.

Caisleán Seilide
(snail castle)

Further I went on and completely went out of my mind when I was struggling with Cahir castle. One of the panoramas done there (in the main yard of the castle) had a strange problem which could be related to a misalignment maybe: the edges of the castle itself were glowing as if it was a halo effect. It is not a halo effect as this white line is sharp and not fuzzy or soft like the halo effect. I'm completely blank about this problem. Anyway, the idea for creating Caisleán Seilide was inspired as I was moving around with the coordinate system under the planet projection (as usual) and notice how some parts of the castle are longer than the others. The only thing I regret about this panorama specifically, maybe, is that I tone-mapped it in Photoshop. It did a fine job but probably it was harder to make a drama out of this panorama specifically. All of the above panoramas were merged in HDR slides first using an older version of Photomatix, and I didn't bother to redo the merging again to see if these problems would just disappear.

Back to reality. It seems I'm left now with some of the final images I could be working with from my travel to Ireland in 2014. Mostly floral and I got to say, they are mostly cliché. But there was some promising venture in those.

An Ghrian Gorm
(the blue sun)

Many of these shots did need a work in the focal depth; I had to mimic a shallow depth (using Lens Blur) to the background to isolate the foreground better (since my lens didn't do its job well in the very beginning!). It is a really hard work and a painstaking job, since you have to go around selecting the specific areas only that need to be protected (or blurred) before applying the blurring effect. For this reason I do expect many glitches in the original image despite the fine look when in small size like An Ghrian Gorm above. I see this radiating effect of blue and purple pleasing (despite being oversaturated at times), thus I decided to do another one.

Corcra chun Goirm
(purple to blue)

But the real catch was an architectural detail from Ashford castle (or its periphery to be precise). It began as a play, then developed into a serious venture which I'm trying to do over and over again whenever I get the chance for such play.

Stánóir an Óir
(gold gazer)

I have to say that from far away, Stánóir an Óir does look like a person with closed eyes. It started with a half face of the statue (which was on the top of the tunnel entrance leading to the walled gardens of Ashford castle). I did previous edit such a shot and wanted to do something different here but didn't know what exactly. Suddenly the whole "vision" started when I played around with the contrast if I remember correctly; then I thought this is a good chance to concentrate the light in specific areas and darken the rest to make a dramatic look. So it was, and the rest was a Photoshop game. Originally, Stánóir an Óir is just a half face, but then it was duplicated and the duplicate is flipped horizontally and attached to the rest to make for a complete face! Then there was a nose and lips job (yes like in cosmetics) to enhance the look a bit. The awkward point here is that the nose is actually somewhat out of focus but probably not that obvious after all. I had to do sharpening twice or thrice to increase the visual impact, while the golden patches were simply a result of adjusting the white balance in RAW before opening in Photoshop. Thus, a dull white statue was transformed dramatically, first by RAW editing, then by Photoshop. I'm looking now for more instances of this sort to work out my mind about it a bit. I think it is a good chance to vent creativity a bit instead of this dull winter season I'm having.

Finale

Things are going slow and sluggish, and I'm trying my best to enjoy my time as much as possible throwing back all the hardships. I'm trying to synthesize a feeling of carelessness deep within me, specially when it comes to conditions at work.
We had a meeting lately and I had to participate and the end result is a bit perplexing. According to one of the members of the committee that manages my workplace said that I did a pretty good job and I should participate more in such meetings when they are due (usually I'm not part of it). This is a good thing because it is encouraging and, well, someone expresses how valuable I am, but on the other hand there is a gloom lurking, as it means more responsibility and a careful venturing in that domain, in a time when all I'm thinking of is myself and my leisure, and doing what I like to do.

Source: Amazon

I'm in the process of reading an interesting book here, which I've brought with me from Dublin's airport, but didn't start reading it except of late. The book is by Daniel Kahneman, and as it says on the cover, Kahneman is a Nobel laureate. Kahneman is a psychologist and discusses many (logical) psychological issues, specially those affecting the general public. I had some ideas specifically about the media, and this man here, a professor, did explain exactly what I perceived in the media under his term: Availability Cascade. I advice everyone reading this now to get this book. Ironically as the title says, Thinking Fast and Slow, I do find myself reading it slowly; probably mainly because the language is English with long passages and entwined terminology, but after all English is not my first language - I guess I should learn fast-reading in English. Saying that, I'm doing some effort as well in learning Irish, at least in writing it for the time being!
I've been running errands in a continuous rhythm by now, every single day. Makes me think of a real vacation as well of doing nothing but sleep and walk somewhere nice. Alas, my duties are always calling for me…

Quick…

Well, I think I'm going to wrap this quick for the time being. The time to turn back to work is close by and I think my soul is not yet ready for this! My time table and schedules are in a real mess, testified by the traveling luggage case that still laying around on my room's floor! But the real annoyance is yet to come; my first day at work is in fact my appointment day for some regular eyes examination - and I HATE those examinations.

Disaster

Meanwhile, I'd like to note what happened here as a "miracle." I was almost going to delete all the folders of images from my laptop since I've copied all the folders into my PC. In a glance, then, I've noticed that one folder which contains several single shots and one full panorama was not copied (specifically dating October 3^rd). I'm not sure why and how this folder was copied with the rest, but I've noticed the folder of this date specifically had no shots, except for 2 selfies! (yes selfies, self portrait done back in Ireland). Anyway, this is a lesson for me right now as to go through the files and folders after any session or travel, and never to delete any file right away after copying. I think what mainly happened here was caused by the fact that I didn't change the time on my camera when I traveled to Ireland (I did later though) - this affects the way files are organized and to what folders specially if the shots were taken before and after midnight time according to the homeland time (Kuwait's time), while it's not midnight in the destination (Ireland's time), and thus making one apparent session be split in between 2 folders without knowing! The panorama in that folder, on the other hand, is kind of problematic because it was not centered correctly, but that would be another topic to be discussed later maybe.

Processing-wise now. The work with my new arsenal of images from Ireland had been somewhat slow this week; mainly because of the bad sleeping pattern and the busy mind with other things, which made me dull with inspiration and imagination when I work with photos. However, I've got into the second phase of processing my panoramas: surreal projections. Which means, mainly, planet projection beside other stuff.

Táim Suas ag Dul
(I'm going up)

However, my very beginning with the second phase of panoramas was actually a vertical panorama and not a planet projection. Saying this, there is already a panorama that I've neglected on purpose because I can't work my mind with it or decide how it should be, and that is the panorama from the lounge.
Anyway, it is typical of me to do a vertical panorama out of confined elongated places like corridors. The surreal view of up and down in one image just fascinates me (call me a psycho, I really don't care). Here, in Táim Suas ag Dul we can find the typical mistake that I do, always. A non-central position which shows drastically later on when the panorama is stitched (and there other panoramas which got it worse than this!). Despite all the trials to remind myself of the importance of centralizing the tripod on location in relation to a specific feature in the space, I just fail to adhere to my own advice. You can see the effect here clearly in the bad alignment of the lamp in the ceiling and the stair case: you make one straight the other would tilt, and getting them together in one alignment is impossible. However, the dramatic scenery that was done in planet projection brought me some condolences for this mistake…

Beidh Solas Tríd An Dorchadas
(there will be light through the darkness)

The panorama taken in front of the Waterfront, Beidh Solas Tríd an Dorchadas, was my first target for such planet projections where the clouds can be extracted for details. The hard part in processing this image is the color tint as a whole. The blue sky you see here was actually bluer than this but I had to put down the tint a bit just to make it reasonable (fearing "bleed" of saturation). Originally, the sky was white with some dark areas. At the end, I had to achieve somewhat a manual contrast control by dodging and burning specific areas. Of course all of that was done AFTER tone-mapping the HDR panorama. Luckily, I've saved a stitching file for all (or most) of the panoramas that I've done in flat format. Thus, all I have to do is change the perspective and few options and then stitch (no need to go on and create control points and align images all over again). However, the really dramatic view which I really liked is not here, but somewhere in Co, Mayo!

Réalta an Ashford
(star of Ashford)

I really love this panorama specifically, the one taken in front of Ashford castle (and hotel). Despite the fact that it wasn't quite centralized and it has some unbalancing elements, yet the atmosphere and the colors of this location specifically give me delight. Here, I've tone-mapped using Photoshop (like I did with Aughnanure's panorama) just to control the aspect of the sun. No worries about matching the left and right edges of course (i.e. the seam) since we are not going to make a QTVR out of this one. I've already tried to contact the staff by contacting them on Instagram (no response so far as I'm typing this) about using these panoramas - at least for contests. The situation would have been different if Ashford was a landmark managed by the state instead of being a property owned by some private companies. Anyway, I can do nothing but to wait and see!

Finale

Well, I've skipped here a lot. Some QTVRs were made but I think not much to be said or done about them, except of thinking of doing a specific page for large format QTVR maybe? Saying this, I look back at all the things that I'm supposed to be doing beside photography but they are on halt so far. Gives me a shiver down the spine.
In the meantime, I've been active with the group in preparations of an expo related to the Book's international fair here, some time around 23^rd of November, beside running after Al-Thani contest. Let's hope no fuss this time with the catalogs (we didn't get the previous ones for Austria's contest yet!). But all of these activities don't keep my mind busy enough into other realms still, nor they are able to keep my nightmares away. My life is a real mess for sure and one thing is needed for sure at the moment: to travel again. Alas, this won't be any time soon…

An Caisearbhán Mór
(the grand dandelion)

Fáilte go gConga...

Just like someone waking up from a dream, I can't believe that I'm already on my 10^th day in here and only 3 days are left till I move out and head to Dublin.
I'm checking things right now for a possibility to visit Inchagoil island, which might take place on Sunday or Monday. Because of the pressure somewhat here, I've canceled my plans to visit Brigit Gardens. It is a nice place but I do need some time to enjoy the nature around the Waterfront B&B too. I do need time too to put my tools down and arrange them in order to fit it all inside my suitcase before heading to the station.

Today, I've headed to Cong town, in Co. Mayo, to the north of Oughterard (which lies in Co. Galway itself). The town is the location of Ashford castle, which is now a 5-star hotel, and Cong Abbey. Thus, in the beginning we headed to the castle.

On the way to Cong

Things had changed a bit since 2009. Apparently, there is now a gate before the golf course and to cross it there is supposed to be some sort of payment. Anyway, we passed the gate without paying anything. My first target was the main fountain in front of the castle, and there I've placed my stuff to do a panorama. It was a fast rhyming panorama because the sun was shining today. After that I've started to search for that mysterious pathway around the premises which I've went through 5 years ago. I remember this path had a name,  a very specific name containing the word "Lady" - but this year I didn't find this sign; it was all entitled as "The Walled Gardens".

On the top of the entrance of the path.

Now, I think this path is supposedly to go around the "monk's fishing hut" or something like that, but I'm just going to call it "the path". This path also leads or circles the Falconry school in the premises. I have to say I kind of got lost there trying to find my way to the old path I've encountered before 5 years ago. I went back and forth until I've encountered a gateway which I remember clearly that it lead to the gardens and the path, and some of the details there which I didn't catch back then are now into my camera! Once I've found the way, I've encountered a shaded path made of tree branches which was the perfect spot for some shots; and specifically IR shots.

After taking few shots for this short pathway with my Rokinon 8mm fisheye, I switched to my 15mm fisheye lens (as it is the lens I can use infrared filter with). Unfortunately I didn't have the time to cut a little piece of the infrared filter slide (which I have in my bag) to fit my Rokinon 8mm. Maybe I would do that any time now or maybe I should leave it till I get back home!

Infrared shot for the shaded path.

Now, to take this infrared shot, I was supposed to expose for around 12 minutes. I was somewhat in a hurry and urging to move forward, specially that this spot was in the midway and I was expecting people passing by (the passage is narrow and I was blocking it). Thus, I've decided to shoot it at ISO400 instead of ISO100, which reduced the time from 12 minutes to 3 minutes only. And, they were really long minutes! Another infrared shot was made later in a different position, but at ISO500 to make it even a bit faster. That one took 6 minutes to be done! Those trees surely do provide a good shade.

Going back to the beginning...

On the way I took various shots for the forest and the path in different lenses (mainly the 8mm Rokinon fisheye). In general though, I think they are quite the normal shots like those I've done 5 years ago. In fact, they are even less in number. And here comes the problem which I will talk about briefly later.
After finishing I've just headed to the cab and since I was tired, I asked the driver to just skip the abbey. Thus, no pictures or panoramas from there, despite the magnificent architecture of that abbey. Even when I got into the car, I've left my camera at the backseat and didn't keep it with me to take pictures on the way. I was so tired, not only physically, but also emotionally.

It seems that I'm pressuring myself just to take pictures because everyone was expecting me to take a lot of pictures. This stress, probably, lead to my brain to switch off and I couldn't notice the beauty that I was hoping for like when I was a freshman to this area 5 years ago! I think I've missed the point big time and it is time for me to just enjoy my vacation without thinking about photography - and this is something I'm planning to do soon, just before I leave this place. As for now I've canceled my plans for Brigit Garden, and maybe I will do one night photography in the coming few nights for me here just before I leave…

Cuvaitum At Work...

My mood has been off lately. Trying to smile and laugh just to cover up for the bleed. Ah well, who cares anyway. At least I had the chance to play with my camera and catch a panorama in day time, away from the cops and security people. An experiment that I might be willing to do again, some time...
Previous weekend was specially weird. I did sleep so early. So early that I won't be sleeping like that for work itself! And wake up early too. I didn't want to miss the chance here so I went on to have breakfast on the beach and look for something to capture. I took my tools including my Manfrotto 303SPH VR-Head (was it a coincidence?) and drove along the beach. It was around 7 a.m. or a bit before that when I settled behind Kuwait Towers and started to do my job in a hurry fearing the usual. One panorama was enough to keep me busy for a while now. There are lot of things to do with one panorama, as different viewing angles do make a difference now and I won't let go, from now on, of a panorama until I exhaust my options with it. However, I didn't miss the chance to take some single clicks here and there. It's nice to add some icing to the cake isn't it?
Just before going on, I would like to talk about my previous "homework" in my photography class.

I. Homework #1:

It was our first homework in the Photography Class L1. The main point was to criticize the images in general. Along the years that I've been working with my camera and specially in the field of HDR techniques, I've faced many useless comments and criticism that just don't consider what I'm trying to say in the image. Anyway, I think my mind now has developed a sense of what is a "real" criticism and what is "trash". For this reason, I tried my best to do the shots in JPG only without RAW and without any adjustments at all. Since my teacher is the one who will criticize me, then I have no problem at all and I would learn here, instead of putting up with depressive non-sensical comments. Anyway, our homework was to take 4 shots, and I did take several shots for same scene and then picked the best as I think for this homework. Some people brought 5, 6 and even 10 shots. I wonder if they have problem with mathematics!?

Nail in a Wall

My first shot, nail in a wall. I don't know what happened to this nail, anyway I was surprised for its shape. The fact is I had only 2 hours probably to take the shots before my class starts, thus my mind went on thinking so fast about a solution. The idea was to have a long shadow of the nail but unfortunately, the sun was not in the proper angle in the afternoon. I tried to fix the proportions according to the law of thirds as much as possible, as shooting in this angle was hard. The nail is on a column and a bit high from the ground level, and also on the edge of a small stairway. I had to play around with my tripod until I made it stable and high up above the stair steps and the ground. My teacher said he likes the texture but because he didn't want to announce the names of the photographers when he viewed the pictures, I decided to keep silent and not explain my motive and the things that went wrong for me. The main concept of this image is loneliness, and if there was a shadow it would complete the meaning I had mind. Loneliness vs. Greatness.

Metallic Design

The second picture was taken for the rail of the stair way at home. After taking the image and uploading it to my PC I've noticed that the front portion (top left corner) is a bit blurry which is something I didn't want in fact. Anyway, my teacher liked the concept but, like I thought also, he said the door and the books on the left were a source of distractions. Unfortunately, I can't remove them, and if I was to take the shot in portrait I believe more distractions would be included. He liked the angle and the blur effect (shallow depth). I would crop the distractions but as I said, I wanted the images untouched as much as possible.

Floral Design

The third image, Floral Design, was also from the stairway rail. I had this idea long time ago (but thinking of a panorama for the stairs alone actually). The image was taken with my Tamron 70-300mm, and probably at 200mm or close to that. I was pointing to the rail from a distance of around 2 or 3 meters (~ 6-9 ft). The reason for this is simply, from a close distance I would be able to put my tripod calmly. Because I didn't use a timer here to take the shot, seems the image was shaken a bit, or it was blurred slightly because I used manual focus (always use it with my Tamron). My teacher noted that there is a little shake in the image when viewed in 100%. At this point, my teacher said that apparently this person (i.e. me) likes textures, which is true. I'm not so fond of portraiture.

Qul

I don't remember really what my teacher said about the fourth image, Qul, but the image you see here is actually the adjusted RAW and not the direct JPG that was viewed in the class. Anyway, it is simply a zoom into some Arabic calligraphy engraved on a wall clock in the main hall (living room). Tamron was also used here and I had to raise the tripod higher than my head. The play was in the WB to give more golden streak to the whole thing. I think it was Flash WB.

The clock in the hall (old picture with illusional adjustments)

My teacher is a school by himself, and I guess I'm lucky to be one of his students. Trying patiently to wait for the big bites of info that will make my brain jump a bit. So far, in Level 1 now, the info encountered are mostly well-known to me. Left to say, all of the images except of the first one were submitted to stock sites, but after RAW adjustments. No HDR this time.
My teacher has an impressive photostream on Flickr. Give it a try. He's a genius! As for me, I still hate Flickr for some reason I don't know. I just reject it mentally!

II. Cuvaitum:

One of the surprises that I've encountered this week is, when I wanted to name one of my pictures in Latin, I've discovered that Google Translation engine did include a translation for "Kuwait" in Latin. I didn't know there would be any translation for it really, as mostly the name, specially Kuwait's, is copied as it is in English into various languages. Kuwait was translated as Cuvaitum.
Last Friday morning, and because of the amazing adjustment in my sleeping time, I woke up in the very early morning (with ease), something that doesn't happen when I think of going to work! Anyway, I didn't want to miss the chance and picked my tools, and specially my VR-Head. I can say, I picked it up half-intentionally. I was hoping that I will do some panorama, but I didn't know just yet for what. After having breakfast I was staring around trying to find something, and even drove along the seaside trying to search for a potential. Finally, my eyes was set on a location that I deem, usually, a taboo. I did take pictures from there before but this location is always dangerous to me (me, being someone with past experience with cops). Kuwait Towers.
Now, Kuwait Towers are a pretty nice target for photography at night more than it is in day time (probably only in very early morning or at sunset when you get some special light qualities). I did take some shots long time ago for the towers when I was experimenting back then with my Canon 350D. Sweet old days.

Humid Towers

Kuwait Towers in A Windy Day

But this time the circumstances are different. Completely different. Day time, early morning, the sun is rising and, a panorama. Maybe one thing is common between the old and the new images: all are HDR, and all were manually tone-mapped.
Since I'm working with a panorama, I had to do it as fast as I can for fear of any "undesired" visitors in the early morning (a bit before 7 a.m.). I skipped working out with the nadir and took only direct shots that I didn't use later on. One panorama, many opportunities...

Towers of The Rising Sun

I know that Japan is the land of the rising sun, but are there towers for the rising sun? Oh well. The main difficulty here lies in cloning out the lower portion. I've cropped a bit from the lower part where the VR-Head shows, but this was not the difficult thing to do. It was my shadow with the tripod. Because the ground had a pattern in formation, it was so hard to make it unique, or maybe I'm out of patience to finish this and I couldn't bear in mind working slowly and copy brick by brick. It is possible to make it unique but it's not for me now. I don't have all the time in the world nor the power (cloning work is done in HDR mode, meaning more processing power). I approached the situation with many tricks, the last was to copy a portion of the right corner and paste it over the left portion where my shadow was (after cloning it already) and then do a layer Blend as in stack focus.
The tone-mapping was done manually, i.e. in Photoshop itself and playing around with the curve of the histogram myself. I've been a good boy here and didn't touch other slides like the Threshold and the Radius which caused me grief in the past, and will never learn how to do them adequately. But before tone-mapping, I had to reduce the luminance of the sun and that was done simply by adding Exposure adjustment layer, and with the White dropper I click on the disk of the sun. The image appeared darker in the beginning while the sun was like a dot in the sky (which is the thing I want actually). You have to bear in mind when you work in this way that this is HDR. The luminance data are there and not gone; maybe shifted, but not gone. With this simple correction in Exposure, I've moved to tone-mapping. All the later versions of this panorama, were tone-mapped in the same manner, but maybe the fixes for my shadow were different a bit.

Planeta Cuvaitum

The great advantage here in tone-mapping with Photoshop (which is something I rarely do right now) is that you have a control over certain areas, even though Photoshop's tone-mapping algorithm is considered Global, meaning it effects the whole pixels in the image in the same time. However, with the help of the curve and the histogram. This way, I was able to make the sun as a disk with a halo around it by doing a "U" curve at the end of the line. This "U" curve simply means "high-low-high"; now imagine this to the sun disk (out-middle-inner part) and you will be getting a bright circle, then darker circle, then bright spot in the middle. Are you following? Hope so! Such control is not possible in Photomatix and I did try indeed doing some effect but nothing worked to my taste.

Although I almost chose my location randomly in the area behind the towers (and hoping to keep me a bit hidden from the eyes wandering on the street in the front), I think now I was lucky to pick this location! This was apparent when I went on doing a TV (Tunnel-View) effect for this panorama...

Crescent Sun Towers

The shape of the crescent was indeed random. I didn't plan it. It just happened to be there when I twisted the panorama. Only one thing is annoying me here though; the patch in the sky. Cloning problems are apparent here as you see. Cropping further to hide my shadow or the bad cloning would cut out the fun from the rest of the images with nice patterns made by the pavement, so, I guess I have to bear it as it is.

Two projections though, didn't appeal much to me but I had to do them after all just to make things complete. The Vertical and the "Wide View" or WV. The WV is a term I've made out myself really, since I didn't find any proper names for it. It is a manipulation of the Little Planet projection by changing the angles of Pitch and Roll mainly and fixing the orientation with the Yew.

Nos Regulam Solis

Cropping the sides in this vertical panorama was a hard issue for me and I'm still not satisfied with the final product here. I felt cropping was screwing the balance of the image in general specially that the sun and the towers are not exactly on the same alignment. I had to do the cropping to the side to remove the highly stretched pixels (which is normal in such type of panoramas of course). I think what makes it so hard to decide with the crop is the diagonal lines in the image itself which, if straight, would make for a unidirectional look on the whole thing.

Dancing Towers

Not one of my favorites really. The Dancing Towers is supposed to be something with a comedy twist after all. The twists in the tower were made in HDR mode before tone-mapping by using the Wrap option in Photoshop. The tone-mapping (and adjusting curves later on) didn't help me to add some strong contrast but rather darkening the ground. The other problem was that the ground and the sky portions were too much compared to the main subject: the tower and the sun. I had to crop and cropping here wasn't easy either. The subjects of interest are nudged to the left rather than the center or one of the points of the law of thirds.

QTVR

I was drooling to do a QTVR out of this panorama but unfortunately, things were not easy. The fact that the panorama was tone-mapped manually in Photoshop made me lose one key option here, which is very important for making a QTVR: the seamless blend. In Photomatix, this is simply done by ticking one option while tone-mapping; the "360 panorama" option. I don't know yet how to blend the left and right side seamlessly still using Photoshop as my search on the net was in vain. I even tried to put the final panorama into Photomatix and stabilize the sliders as much as possible to keep the look (changing only the Gamma to fix the contrast) and turning on the 360 panorama option, but even that was in vain. Probably the only real benefit that I've gained so far from such search is to know how to add a label or a logo to my panorama instead of the nadir point in more comfortable way, using PTGui. You can find the tips here in the Support/FAQ webpage of PTGui (with many many other useful info that I didn't read before). The QTVR might need some time to load, plus, of course, the QuickTime plugin.

III. Land, Paper, Wall:

On land, it was the ruins of Hore Abbey, which moved to my camera's sensor to be printed later on. Mom desired something to fit in the living room to change the scenery and she was so fond of Ashford castle in fact, an awkward handheld panorama taken back in 2009 in Co. Mayo, Ireland.

Ashford Castle

Unfortunately, when viewed in 100% I've found that the middle portion of the image is out of focus. Probably I was working in AF mode (a big mistake in panorama venture). The greens also don't appear as they are when converted to CMYK system. I had to convert because of previous experience with this printing shop which seems RGB is not appreciated much (although an expert told me that it is a single print and they should be able to produce it properly in RGB). Anyway, the mistake with the focus was a killer enough to abandon the idea. So, mom picked another shot, the ruins of Hore. I have to say I'm really proud now that she picked my stuff!

Ruins of Hore hanging on the wall of the living room.

The print and the frame prices were fair I'd say, but while watching the process going on (in 2 days) I really wished to have my own tools. I fell in love really with the HP designjet 800ps in the printing shop, but unfortunately it is discontinued, and for sure it costs a fortune!

My signature. Still think it sucks!

However, one of the things that I was limited with is, the type of paper that I could pick. In fact, there was only one variety. I'm sure there are several papers out there that are better (and more expensive, I know), but there was only one type so I had to put it down with that. I wasn't ready to move around to other place to check.
The next thing was, after the print and checking the colors, I went to the framing shop. As I expected they were not that professional I would expect but they did a good job with the frame. I was a little upset about it because when I went back to the framing shop to give them a leaflet with my own signature, the print was rolled up and kept between other stuff. I was a bit angry inside because this is not the way to deal with a print. Also, the matting they provided was not thick enough and seems merely like a cardboard. The leaflet I brought was not stuck or anything but merely fixed, and I didn't get the chance to sign on the matting myself. Anyway, after all, mom is happy with it. I only wish if I have the money to get all these stuff together in one place and do my own prints. My printer supports A4 size maximum, but I wish to have one with A3 size capabilities. Would be awesome and in fact, more elegant to frame in that size I think.
I'm trying now to finish this lovely thin book which my friend got me for my birthday (but didn't get the chance to give it to me in time). It is a practical book and to the point, for beginners. I want to write something for now, but I don't know what. So much is gushing out, yet little words are coming in my mind. For one moment I just wish if I can sit down, one leg on the other, and my palms behind my head, and stare into the world... maybe thinking of No Other Worlds...