Cerebrum Mysticum...

A mystic week of some sort. I've suddenly felt the urge to go on and read about mystics and occult. Well, I did have the urge for some time in my life and such things are really normal to strike in my head now and then, but this time I'm thinking of doing more to it into photography.
Now it is the time of the last week in Ramadhan and sort of the time is clogged (specially with my disturbed sleeping pattern) with many things to do. I'm also planning to register in a photography class for beginners after Ramadhan directly, by September 6th. Yes, for beginners. No matter how or what I did before or what advance level I might be in, it is always good to look back at small things that you did not know before. Despite my work so far, I still think I need to learn more about the basics of the camera and exposure. After that class I might take other levels as well (more expensive of course) but we'll see about that later on.

At work seems more busy days are coming on the way with new phases in our "little" experiment taking place now, thus I have to check that I need to type this blog entries as early as possible to be posted in time! Well, which means, in return, that I might have lesser contents to put in here. That is if... anyone cares anyway :)

Because of the disturbance this week, I couldn't put my mind into reciting the 4th chapter of Alexander's story. Well, I'll be frank. I was lazy and playing a game I like. Hope that doesn't count as a sin! But hopefully the engine will get to work by next week or so and more recordings on the way.
The lack of work on my Ayvarith projects, however, poured something on the other side. Ive finally had the mind (and courage) to write something down. But this time, since staring on the notepad on my monitor was not enough to gush out words, I referred to my old method; a paper and pencil/pen. I had the words for some time now but I didn't pin them down until I faced the pen and paper in my office, after working on that experiment. I called it No Superman.I've submitted this one to some websites, and in one website actually, some user notified me asking how did I write such a thing! Well, Thanks! I really don't think I'm good at all. It's just a gush of feelings to a certain matter that makes you spill it out.

I. Mysticis:

Seems my night on the roof last week under the full moon made me literally lunatic, or maybe inspired? Call it whatever you want to, it is just a weird feeling of seeking opportunities to take photos of anything in rhyme of Mystics. I will get back to that panorama taken from the roof after a while.
One of the first ideas to do something mystic kicked in when I finished reading the holy book.

Chapter of Mary (19)

There is a little story behind every aspect of this image. First of all, it was taken with a fisheye lens and hence, even with a high f-number I realized I might not be able to grab everything into sharp focus; so it was a call for focus stacking. However, I had a problem with the shadows' cast on the book itself thus, I had to turn off the light and use only one source of lighting (the usual old desktop lamp with power-saving light!).
I've fixed the WB value by using the custom K-value in camera. Since the power-saving light is bluish and I wanted to add a sense of antiquity to the book, I had to exaggerate a bit with the color temperature (K-value) and probably pushed it to something lesser a bit than 10,000K! Anyway, while working with these photos (taken with bracketed exposure for HDR merge) there was another story. Because when I was testing the different WBs before the final approach, I've realized that Tungsten makes some interesting hue, by turning the book blue and the red lines in it were glowing hard; so eye-capturing, but later on I had to give up this idea in favor of Daylight WB when I started to merge into HDR (you can change the WB before starting to merge into HDR in Photomatix).
Now, all the HDR slides, after merging, refer to different focus points. In total they were about 5, with each slide bringing a certain area of the open book into focus. I had a little problem merging first because I didn't use the alignment in Photoshop (I thought it's not needed because everything was relatively stable) but then, seems I was wrong and I used to correct for the broken lines. I made 3 versions of the HDR slides changing the WB from Daylight to Fluorescent to Tungsten BEFORE merging into HDR, but seems the desired look in my mind was in Daylight (the other WBs made some weird noise and hot pixels occurring here and there).
Maybe keeping the front portion of the book, where the title of the Surah lies, and blurring the background (the other page) was a nice effect, but because the name of John (first word in first line in second page) sounded a bit important to the whole story of the picture, I've decided to include it into a focus-stacking method as well. Cropping and rotating the image (it was originally in landscape orientation) was done later on after tone-mapping (Photomatix of course) and adjusting in Photoshop.
This was one trend of mystic (and I mean mystic not as mysterious only but also on a spiritual level) and in fact I was doing more work before that with long exposures (since I became a bit obsessed with the idea). Maybe working with clocks is not a mystic thing but the concept of time and using time was always an issue in my life (and probably of many around the world), hence, we can consider it a mystic concept of our lives, as we try hardly to catch upon life. More about it to come later.
Left to say one thing. The image above was rejected by Bigstockphoto because of some "copyrighted material" issues. Seriously? I'm going to ask God for a permission to take a photo of the holy book? Sorry dudes, that doesn't make sense...

II. A Treasure of Perspectives:

Since having a night with a full moon is not something you be able to catch every day, sorry, every night I mean, I've decided to mangle and go through the panorama again and again trying to extract more perspectives, and in return, more meanings from every picture I could make out of this (spherical) panorama. The first version, however, was a typical little planet form (posted previously):

The Lonely Planet

Well, I guess the name tells it all. I liked the effect myself and I went on trying to extract more from this panorama by changing the perspective. One of these changes makes up for almost a landscape orientation (or let's say a full-frame) image but with simple difference: everything is twirled.

Over There

It is not a panorama, but it is extracted from a full spherical panorama itself. After setting the stitching projection to "little planet" in PTGui, I started to play around with angles of Pitch and Roll trying to discover more perspectives. Until I've finally arrived to this angle which resembles the full moon at the end, in the horizon, like calling as it is a light at the end of a tunnel. A spark of hope in the middle of the night. I didn't mind the distortion in the surrounding structures, as I was reliant on the moon to grab the sights more than the surrounding structures. However, they do add some surrealism if you are up to that!
Before, I've stated that in long exposures at night, sometimes the stars that do not appear to the naked eye can be recorded, and they are here in this panorama, but they are usually erased with cleaning the noise and doing other techniques to smooth out the sky. Here, however, I decided to pick (some) stars and exaggerate their sparkle by using the regular brush in Photoshop. After all, I added some Photo Filter adjustment layer to put on a reddish wash on the whole scene to break its severe blue shade. Hmm, I think it adds a bit to the mysticity.
A vertical panorama was done as well, naturally (but I didn't think of it first!) and here I needed to move the central point to make some interesting perspective, of two skies, up and down. I didn't experience though how it would look if the skies met in the middle!

The Underworld

But I was taken more by the tunnel view for this panorama, which many people liked on MostPhotos...

To Another Universe

This perspective specifically was just an experiment to test how good it is to do a Twirl effect like in those Sci-Fi stuff. The problem with the Twirl effect is that it might smudge too much and not achieving the proper look I'm aiming for, and, you have to work in 8bit format, since it is disabled in Photoshop in 16bit format. In other words, you have to step down a bit with color's resolution.
The original work was stitched with 4000x4000 pixels. Usually I go for 8000x8000, which requires a lot of processing power and time. Since I was thinking it might be a failing experience after all, there is really no need to aim high and 4000x4000 is just enough.
The looks at the time of tone-mapping this tunnel-view was totally different and dull, despite the fact that the HDR slides were merged using ProPhoto color space. However, after tone-mapping and opening the image in Photoshop (which I've fixed on ProPhoto as a default color space) the image appeared as you see it above with cyan patches around the ground. Comparing the two looks, the Adobe 1998 and the ProPhoto, I thought the ProPhoto space is more adequate to the mystic and sci-fi look I'm seeking, and this is what you see above.
The twirl effect was done to the image on a separate layer and I made it carefully in a small amount to add curves but not diffuse the image totally. A twirl alone is not enough as a good effect and this is the reason why I made it on a separate layer, so that I can retain the position of the moon in the horizon back to its place by using layer masks (to erase the twirled moon and put on the original moon back in its position from the lower layer). The name is obvious I presume; did it take you to another universe!?

III. Tick Tocks and Blinks:

As I've stated earlier, I was (and still) obsessed a bit with the idea of long exposures, time, and, clocks. This obsession raises up from my interest to see things, slow things specifically, run fast. How would it be to take a long exposure of a moving snail, or a turtle, of a long night sleep...etc? Maybe my interest in night photography lead me to this point now, but however, it is not something new really. I've already created an image of a little long exposure before (and unfortunately rejected from major stock sites).

Busy Life

Maybe the above image was one of the best I've did so far. In fact, and because I used my Tamron lens raised up high above the watch, I didn't use here any ND filters to control the time. I don't have an adapter to fit my Cokins. However, this effect after all was not done by long exposure alone, but I had to take several shots over a period of around 6 minutes and then blend them together in Photoshop in layers (using Soft Light blend).
Same concept was done but with a more time-stretching aspect this time, taking shots at an interval of around 3 minutes and some few seconds for one of my watches. This time I've faced a problem with the proper WB, as I wanted to add some more luster to the golden patches in the watch itself but then there was a problem of being "over-average" with that effect.

Mixed-Up Schedule

The WB was fixed as the RAW files were opened in Photoshop and the effects were synchronized with all the slides. The reason for setting the time to 3 minutes AND few seconds is that I didn't want the seconds hand to end up in or around the same place with every shot taken at exactly 3 minutes, so I had to add few seconds (something like 10 or 15 seconds) to the interval between every two shots to give more chances of finding the seconds hand somewhere else, other than the previous position. Each image, in fact, was itself some sort of a long exposure (my room was partially dark) extending from 15 to 30 seconds each.


Still though, I didn't quite achieve the effect that I want, that is recording the seconds hand going over in a full circle around the clock face. Tried this already with my wall clock for which the seconds hand ticks continuously non-stopping in every second, but it goes smoothly all over the clock face. With the help of some ND filters, I've managed to get a long exposure of one hour. Despite the weird reddish shades that occurred in the final image (which might be related to the change in the sun's angle outside, because sun rays still pass with my curtains off, but I'm not sure yet), however it was not a big deal to fix the image and make it look normal, but it was a big issue with the noise. Anyway the image didn't achieve exactly the desired look I'm seeking.

Hurry Up!

The Median method was a companion all through the cleaning process (along with cloning to remove the brand mark, otherwise it won't be accepted in stock sites!). However, the small circle inside is formed by the seconds hand, but the seconds hand is larger than this and should, probably, made a bigger trace. Same thing for the minutes hand which appears blurred between 3 and 4. This is natural since the light is introduced (with the help of ND filters) slowly into the camera and to register the final movement just before the close of the shutter, the minutes (and seconds) hand will be in a certain place. The shutter then closes finalizing the image and the hands' movement all the way were not recorded except in a few portion of the clock face. In other words, to record the movement of the minutes hand across the full clock face, then we need an exposure time more than one hour. This will make things harder to do indeed.
The look of the blurry movement and the stable background of the clock face cannot be compensated by taking photos in intervals and layering them with a blend. The blur has its own taste and feel. I'm trying to find any website (official that is) related to the manufacturers of these watches and clocks just to seek my luck in asking for a permission to put an image of their products for sale. It is not possible to clone out the brand mark all the time!

That was the ticking part of this final portion. Comes then the blinking part. Just for fun I was running with my camera in the house taking pictures of my niece playing around (and getting on my nerves as well) when I decided then to take pictures of my brother's eye. This little experiment made me believe more than not ever overexposure is a bad thing and not every "bad" image is really bad. The image got accepted in some sites and rejected from some stock sites (for model release aspects). I have to give credit to my brother though because the poses (or looks) were his ideas in fact.

Photographer in The Eye

In case you wonder about the name, it is because my reflection is there, inside the pupil. This is one of my favorites, and it is not a tone-mapped HDR at all. Simply taken with a flash unit mounted on my camera and zooming into the eye with my EF-S 18-55mm Canon lens. Some adjustments were done later on of course in the RAW editor. The thing is, I didn't plan it. I merely took the image to see the details of the iris later on, but the whole image just happened to be awesome for me. More sharpening added a grunge look, which somehow might be not good looking for other images and concepts. See, overexposure is not a bad idea at all, to limits. I've printed this image on a white photo paper, which probably if mounted on a white wall (and erasing a bit of the edges in the image itself) would be an awesome effect on the wall! Surprise your fellows with an eye popping out of the wall!
The other two images were also done with the same lens but without flash, and the pose was also suggested by my brother. They are interesting, but don't beat the one above I believe.

Enlighten
looking at the ceiling.

The interesting thing about "Enlighten", beside the reflection in the eye, is the sharp eyelash line and eyebrow. I added even more sharpening (with noise cleaning) and also some change in saturation and hue to pop out the eye in between a dark skin (his skin isn't that dark really!).

Psycho

"Psycho" on the other hand was a good concept in color, but two reasons made me convert it into Black and White and try to increase the contrast from there to give a tougher feeling. The first reason is simply the idea of  a psycho, which I believe is represented better in Black and White instead of color. Remember that Black and White images tend to make the viewer concentrate on the concept and the composition instead of the color gradients in the image. The other reason was that a bluish streak around the eyes that I didn't know exactly how to remove properly, so along with the first reason I thought it is better to have the whole thing in Black and White. Maybe I should have done some skin smoothing (Median method again). Well, it might intensify the effect of a Psycho with such a skin!


Almost, this is what I have been doing this week. I'm still looking forward for more experiments to do but I need some planning. I took some photos for some instruments and devices in my work place, but I don't think I'm allowed to put those here. However, I think they are sort of boring, except for geeks of course!
T.G.I.T. Finally a day when I can't complain about my sleepless night, nor I have to wake up so early....

Most Photos!

Here we are again. At work. After one week of holidays still I can't get enough of this. The problem even percist now because directly after this holiday, today, I do have to train some people in some special (simple) course at my work place. I don't know what is going on, but despite the fact that I hate to interact with people, since I've returned from Ireland last October, I've been even more isolated, let's say. I can't even stand dealing with people, and now I do HAVE to train some of them, and tour them around. I just need my camera...

Disperately, trying to put my life back again into order after my vacation. I have to admit, so far, I'm failing. My mind is clogged with ideas but so little to be done. However, I worked little bit on some images in this holiday. I hope I can push myself further and work on my Ayvarith project. I remember I've put a design for the Welcome page, but where is the damn file!!!?
I'm trying to make things simple for the webpage, and still I don't know yet how to do it. Beside that, I need lot of patience with voice recording (to show how to pronounce letters). To make things worse, my brother wants me to help him in translating some texts for a documentary. Ugh! If only I know how to time manage. I need some super powers in the work here. Something that makes me awake for 3 days with no blink of the eye! But even coffee had failed me now... the more I drink of it, the more easily I go to sleep!

In the holiday I worked on some images, from Ireland and from Failaka, but maybe the most exciting moment I encountered this week is the discovery of some new website to submit my images. Mostphotos.com. It is mainly a Swedish website, but the way they deal with images is cool and awesome. Mostly, all images are accepted, regardless of the quality (providing they are 5MP or more), and files are sold as either small or large sizes with prices from €5 to €25. The coolest thing in this website, unlike other stock sites, it is a site that patrons arts more than commerce, in a way that you can interact with other photographers, LIKE their images like on Facebook and comment as well. I didn't encounter such things in previous stock sites like Fotolia, Canstockphoto or Bigstockphoto. But one should be careful though, easy acceptance for such images might get you in the habit of caring less about quality!
I was happy to see many photographers do LIKE my images, although truth to be said, they are FAR better than I do; in their colors and compositions... etc. One of the most liked images and right now it is #1 as you login into the website, and that is the lonely road going out of the old resorts in Failaka:

I've been adding some images as well, old and new, and lot of them are having their likes as well. There are lot of HDR photographers as well that got magnificent images on the show. The cool thing about this website, you don't have to be afraid of HDR of being rejected for being "over-filtered" (always had this problem with Canstockphoto however I try to make images look normal). You can set your wild expressions with HDR as you like and as people like it, because people won't care much about the commerce or how much such image is marketable.

 One of the images I went wild with my HDR sliders, and still some people like it 

that way though I know it won't be accepted in stock sites!

Be careful though from that point of dealing with HDR. I tend to ask myself now and then when I have a new HDR slide at hands "what do I want?". One of the images that I worked with lately and posted in Mostphotos as well as Canstockphoto, is an image I called "Sisters of Hope." This image was also taken from Failaka, and it is a side view for the image above:

Sisters of Hope

In case you are wondering about the title here, it is just the feeling of finding such trees in almost in the middle of no where, on a deserted island. This image, despite the HDR combination, I had to pull myself back a bit and try hard to do my best without manipulating much of the HDR tone-mapping. The reason I didn't use one image here (and enhance it later) is that each image had a good portion of light in some area that the others do not have, mainly, in the sky region. As far as I remember, I combined generally two of the three images together and discarding probably the third image which was the most exposed one with so many bright areas. Since the image was taken handheld, it is naturally shifted from one slide to another, and Photoshop proved to be no good at aligning images. This was not the first time nor the last time. Many images I had that Photoshop failed to align properly, and for this matter Photomatix was superb, and it works on removing ghosting artifacts as much as possible. In some rare occasions I would need to tone-map manually with Photoshop, and hence I do have to use Photomatix first to align the images and then save the HDR slide and plug it into Photoshop. Not the process I quite like, but oh well... . But before tone-mapping I had to do some stuff like cloning some shades on the ground and brightening the soil to give a good contrast, and then tone-map almost without changing anything in fact! On a 100% zoom the image might look shaky because of the wind playing through the leaves, but I think with a print on A4 size, it might be quite interesting. This is what I'm planning next. I didn't work with my printer for some time now.

I'm still looking for some way to calibrate or make a profile for my printer+ink+paper combination using my scanner though, since my ColorMunki tool that calibrates the monitor is not a tool to calibrate the printer and prints.

The previous days were also of some surprise as well. One of the panoramas that I went wild with HDR tone-mapping with, just to give it a spooky look despite the sun outside, got accepted in one of the stock sites, unexpectedly! Here goes the story:

Bank of Failaka. Any ghosts around?

This image is for the bank (I suppose) that I took a panorama of on November 5th. I made a previous version of this panorama (of course it is all done in HDR mode) but in the beginning I didn't like it. It was somehow cheerful in colors despite the apparent damage in the structure. So, I went on going wild with my sliders in tone-mapping this HDR panorama. In the beginning I was not aiming really to submit this image to stock sites because I know what they want. They want marketable images, not slices of art. Well, it is their right however. Just for fun, I've submitted the panorama to Canstockphoto, and Bigstockphoto. The first declined the file for "over-filtering" as usual, but the surprise was, Bigstockphoto, accepted that image! This incident really encouraged me to try my luck with heavily tone-mapped HDR next time when it comes to Bigstockphoto. Of course, the image is there on Mostphoto.com as well. If only now I can find a place to give away my QTVRs. That would be awesome I guess!

My work with the photos now is really a messy schedule, but I'm hoping to do some of the panoramas, specially the one that I got stuck with, from Ireland. As for now, I have to concentrate on the translation project that my brother wants my help with!

Lonely

Alexander 6, V123.

That was amazingly fast. Just when I've submitted some images for approval on Canstockphotos, 30 minutes later you'd see them in your portfolio! I was reluctant about those images though, well, mainly the house, because some times you are asked to get some "property release", which is like impossible in my case here!

It was not a completely idle weekend, yet it was not so active as well. At least, I've tried some stuff with my camera. Unfortunately I didn't upload the image on the net to be used here for now, but if it is accepted you can see it easily in my portfolio on Canstockphoto (and it was also submitted to Bigstock).
The whole story began when I found out that I was simply... idle. The idea sparked when I discovered that I still have a RAMs chip in my backpack (when I was looking for some papers). This chip was taken from my sister's laptop when I changed it for her in some workshop, upgrading her laptop from 500MB RAM up to 2GB RAM. I kept the chip since then and when I found it, I've put it aside to give it to my elder brother. He knows what to do with such stuff. However, after looking at my camera and tools, I realized it might be a chance for one techno-shot. Something I rarely do. I shot that thing with the help of my humble soft box, but I didn't fix any lights around it, except of the room's light. It was merely just to provide a white background. I used my 18-55mm lens, since I don't have a macro lens. This lens is my choice for close-up shots. I think I've fixed it on 55mm (max) and made the shot. I've made the chip standing up with a piece of toy clay, which was then removed from the image by cloning. Not a good solution though, I should've thought of something else. However, a macro lens, I believe, would have delivered a greater result, specially I'm using a shallow depth of field to give some sense of greatness or length to the chip, but well, this sense might come better with a macro lens as well.
I've made several shot under ISO200 and ISO100, but found out that ISO200 are better because the background was brighter and the chip stands out more. All you have to do then is just clean the noise with NeatImage, which I've calibrated to my camera long time ago. The thing I was aiming at (which was not a good option but worth a trial), I was trying to make a focus stack of 2 images, to sharpen the front and the middle areas of the chip and leave the tail blurred. Then comparing the results from focus stacking and the normal frontal image, I thought a single shot was enough to make the effect better, and no need for focus stacking. I was concerned for focus stacking mainly to show some details of the chips in the middle. Yet, turned out not so important I believe.

Beside this simple experiment, I kept on playing around with pictures from Ireland, and been changing some of them into Black and White or Sepia and see if any effects or mood changes occur. It was not until that moment, I realize the beauty of that one house I snapped from the motor boat on my way to Inchagoil island on Lough Corrib. It was something about its simple design that makes you feel peaceful. I don't know what is this house, is it just a resident or some B&B! But its view was simply fascinating! I want a home like that one day...

House on Corrib

The image to this house was added before to my collection but here we have mainly 2 different features about this image: a) it's a close up (and hence I didn't realize the beauty of the house before), b) it is made directly from the RAW file without any HDR enhancement, but only RAW file editing; in other words, no more than one exposure snap.
Realizing how beautiful this house looks, I tried to change its colors and I was surprised by the mood change that it gives me. Well, not really mood, but let's say an "inspiration" or "thought" solely by the change of tones in the image. The first thing was to do is to change this into Black and White with the help of adjustment layers (and not converting to greyscale mode).

House on Corrib (B&W under High contrast red filter)

I tend to use the "black and white" adjustment layer instead of converting into Greyscape mainly because of the options available here, which I can do manually originally from the RAW file itself, but I wouldn't be able to master this yet. Plus, my workflow forces me to use such adjustment layers because in most instances, I do need to save the colored version as well for some purpose before working in B&W. Here, I used the High Contrast Red Filter from the ready-made schemes in the adjustment layer itself. This image gives me a feeling of mystery rather than old or antique. Maybe the high contrast in black and white enforces mystery rather than antiquity. We could be on some theory here! Maybe also that this mood is highly influenced by Jonathan Boakes photography and games! Thinking about that now, this black and white with such house design do really reflect the nature of ghosts and hanuted houses. Maybe I would try to add a bit of bluish hue to the image and see how does it go as well.

The next thing to do, normally, is to add  tone to this image, naturally the sepia tone, which was simply added by Photo Filter adjustment layer.

House on Corrib (Sepia).

Now this image does indeed make me feel it is old, and I think the design of the house helps out with it. Sounds something Victorian. Add some white edges and burn some corners and do some tearing on the sides, and voila! you got an antique! It's hard to say any other thing about the sepia tone except that it turns things old. I rarely felt something different about it. Well, maybe it adds a bit of hot hue in some scenes and give an impression of some hot weather.

In the current time there is another little project I want to do with my camera and my dumbells set, but I'm thinking of the settings that I need to fix before the experiment and how to make the dumbells look like flying into the air. I need some help from another person, which unfortunately, is not something easy to do, not even among my family members in the house I live in. But there must be a trick to do everything by myself, as usual. The final product should be something in Black and White as well, and probably with silverish hue added or maybe bluish, depends on the lighting with the flash, since I'm still not mastering that yet!

Now, to some jokes around this place. One week and my watch is still not fixed. C'mon for God's sake!!!

__________

2929. it was then some moments later after the meal is over
2930. Alexander noticed that the old man was in deep thought
2931. thus he said: what is wrong O great grandfather?
2932. your mind seems quite busy as it seems, is not it?
2933. and Agdalán replied: yes, my dear, it is indeed busy,
2934. I am thinking of your ways after you leave this place,
2935. and I think the time has come to give you something
2936. and Alexander asked: and what is that O father?
2937. Agdalán raised up and went to some old wooden chest
2938. and he opened the chest with some large old key
2939. the sound of the metals in the chest were out loud
2940. testifying for the age of this old chest and its history
2941. Agdalán picked something from the chest and closed it
2942. he approached Alexander and opened his palm in his face
2943. the palm of the old man had some weird metals in it
2944. small pieces were they but shiny like the diamonds
2945. Alexander looked with surprise and said: what is it?
2946. Agdalán replied: these are what we call Kalfúd Sámith,
2947. it is the remains of an old stone that came down from Heaven,
2948. they are more precious than gold itself or silver,
2949. this is the inheritance of my fathers, it is for you now,
2950. take it and make a living by them for now for you need them,
2951. since you have no source of living in this world by now,
2952. and I do not want to see you wander as a nomad

Alexander 6, V89.

It's here! Woho! My visa to visit Ireland was issued, in like 2 weeks! I remember it took more than one month last year. I remember as well that last year, when the visa was issued for me, it was issued for a certain number of days that matched exactly the time period of my stay, but now, I've been given 3 months in advance, from September 12th until December 11th. I don't remember such a thing happened that way last year!

I'm passing through a time of quietness if I should say, camera-wise. I've finished the panoramas that I was working on for some time before and after getting my VR head, so, I decided to go on shooting randomly outside and I picked the cat in the house as my target. This time, no HDR shoot or anything, but simply me, myself, and the camera and the flash head which I didn't use in a long time!
I can't say they are great as I couldn't really master the lighting conditions yet nor I can say I did master the flash adjustments and probing, however, I'm not planning to give out these to any stock site, since I know they are full of such pictures!

Some images for his highness, Tiger.

I like specifically his "snowy" look and his hair that's not too short nor long. He's a loner as well. The shots here were all done in tungsten white-balance by mistake, but luckily all was in RAW format so I've adjusted this error later and the picture turned as you can see here after being filled with a blue hue. Still, the real atmosphere was actually at the end of the day and before the final sunset with relatively enough light, but with a flash striking the object (without using the diffuser in the flash head itself) made the light concentrated on the object and turned the atmosphere into almost a night time.

After finishing from this I got inside and took some shots for my niece inside the house, and all were blue as well, but those I didn't work with so far. Hopefully doing to do this today.

On the list also there is one task I'm planning to do. I'm going to try my luck with the images refused from Canstockphoto website, and put them in Bigstockphoto. I didn't put anything there for a long time now and actually I'm not so optimistic that they would be accepted, but I won't lose anything (except of some time duh). For some time, Bigstockphoto website was my favorite location for panoramas, as it accepts apparently single files larger than 15MB, as far as I remember. Of course, I've completely dropped Fotolia from my list here...

I've been reading, or flipping should I say, through Harald Woeste's book about panoramic photography and trying to take mental notes as much as possible about the work flow and the tools used, and specially those related to the final product output. Would be nice if you can handle the panorama on a large print-out instead of staring at it on the monitor all the time! I have a weakness when it comes to the press and the printed media, as I'm completely lost in the technicality and the requirements of such field.

 

I've been notified now that the monopod had been shipped already to my US mailbox. I wished for a combined shipment with the books but unfortunately, seems I have to go and pick my stuff from the DHL twice! Anyway, it is good enough to try it out now, although I was not in a hurry originally, but now I am!

finally, the proof-reading of Alexander 6 is going smoothly and it is about to finish. I've reached like #2257 so far, and won't be days until I reach #3000, the end. Reading is so easy, but writing it down and typing it was a really tideous job. Maybe after finishing this, I would have some time to look upon designing a website for Ayvarith in a more serious manner! Hope so.

__________

2113. then with a smooth voice the Guardian asked
2114. "continue O hero, any more questions?"
2115. but the hero felt embarrassed and said to her
2116. "yes, one more question from me is left,
2117. where to go now? and what I am doing in this land?"
2118. Aramramátáníth said: your destiny is not in my hand,
2119. but to the Hermit, I believe, you must go from here,
2120. my wind shall carry you there easily, O hero,
2121. and under your command it shall move,
2122. the Hermit has all the answers you need,
2123. this is what I am ordered to do for now
2124. then Alexander agreed and decided to move
2125. and he greeted Kaliván and hugged each other
2126. despite the small size of the small creature
2127. but he carried him by the palm of his hand
2128. then Alexander desired to let his Cadid with Kaliván
2129. to help him with the lands of the valley and the trees
2130. but the Cadid refused to go except with his master
2131. and the wind started to gather under the feet of Alexander
2132. and slowly in the air he was raised with his Cadid
2133. then Aramramátáníth announced the beginning
2134. and the invisible wind moved Alexander and his Cadid
2135. to the east they were going now where the Hermit is
2136. where the hopes of Alexander lied for an end

Alexander 6, V5.

Been some days without putting some words here. Well, the natural thing with the holidays. I'm heading back to work by tomorrow after 3 days of holidays (neglecting the weekend, which makes it up to 5 days of holidays).
In this holiday I had some time to make up my own home-made light tent and softbox for my flash, and big thanks for my brother who has soft hands with the tools! I bought some tiny desk lights and fixed some energy-saving light bulbs to use as side lights for my light-tend.

 

My light box or light tent

 

My softbox for my flash head

One tiny problem happened after fixing the sides of the box, and that was the fact that the glue started to eat into the white surface. It is a problem but I don't think it would affect the snapping too much, since the object is going to be inside the box with lights out of the box. The main purpose of these wings on the sides (as I read in the main scheme) is that they serve as "reflectors." You can find the main scheme in this blog.
I didn't try the flash head so much, but I had some trials with the light tent a bit, trying out with my censer again. The first problem was to fix the box on a suitable surface on a suitable height. The table I used before for snapping the censer (and the turtle before) was not a suitable one because of its small surface area and hence, I wouldn't be able to put the desk lamps around (I would need other small tables to do this!). Anyway, after moving here and there, I fixed it over my suitcase (which still contains some stuff I got from Ireland and some books!). I've fixed the desk lamps around it but one problem occured then, and it was obvious in the pictures taken after, but I had no solution to that really. I could have fixed something below the box just to elevate it a little from one side, but the wax was already molten and I didn't want to shake the censer anymore fearing that something would drop down on the inside of the box. I kept it that way and made the censer body as straight as possible, with the molten wax being tilted to one side.
I took many shots in different modes (and sometimes in different WB) but the chain of pictures that I worked with most was a series of 9 pictures taken with constant aperture (f32) and changing shutter speed (time), making up a sequence of 9 exposures.

 

Photoshop composite and tone-mapping of 9 exposures

The good thing here is that the lighting was somehow good and controllable with 3 desk lamps fixed in positions surrounding the light-tent itself, but despite the fact that I used a narrow aperture (f32) as I usually do, to make sparkles of light reflected of the subject, here it did not show up. I'm guessing that I'm supposed to put a light source hitting forward to the censer instead of putting one to the top of the box. Yet, I had some fun merging different exposures.

  

3 exposures, tungsten white balance, merged and tone-mapped with photomatix .

The above image was taken in tungsten white balance, anyway it is not a big deal now with the white balance (in analog photography it was a big deal already, but with digital photography you can change that easily when you shoot in RAW). I called it "Frozen Censer." Despite the fact that I know clearly most of the stock sites won't like such images that got plenty of effects in them, but I put this one in Bigstockphoto.com.

Bigstockphoto had been kind enough to accept lately one or two of my images. Unlike Fotolia, who always refuse images either as "quality problems" or "aesthetic problem," Bigstockphoto does mention the problem exactly for you, and if you can, you would be able to fix the problem (when possible) and submit it again. Of course if there is no potential marketing for the picture itself that's another story. At least, they do mention something for you and don't leave you in the dark like Fotolia does. Lately, all the problems that I've encountered when my files are refused from Fotolia are under the "aesthetic" category, which makes me ask myself how this is fixed?

Anyway, back to the censer again, I made a go also with Exposure Fusion. Although I'm not so fond of this method but sometimes, it does some beauty to the images. I can't really tell what is the algorithm and the method used here, but your exposures are not combined to make one HDR image and then tone-mapped, but it sounds more like direct tone-mapping without passing the HDR phase.

 

Fusion of 9 exposures.

And finally, I tried out the fusion of several white balances extracted from a single image (the original was taken in tungsten WB);

 

Several WBs fused together.

Generally, the contrast is good despite the fact that I did not put a light source directly hitting into the body of the censer from the front. The flame inside has a sharp contrast and appears somehow "flamboyant" from the middle of the censer and the purple hue is dark, but can be shown with some saturation a bit. All the images anyway were not put directly but there was always some manipulation in Photoshop for increasing the contrast slightly or increasing the saturation and changing the hue little bit.

The thing that was missing from this, the sparkle that used to show up when I used the flash in a completely dark room. I have some experiment in my mind currently, and I shall get back to the censer again, I suppose!

Today, we have the 5th verse of Alexander VI; The last part of Alexander's story. The work with my transliteration has stopped as well during the holiday, but tomorrow is the working day, and I think I shall get back with my routine as usual (despite some pressing work in the labs).

__________
97. then Alexander asked about the secret
98. and the old man explained in few words
99. "secret of the lights after the lights in the Beginning"
100. thus, Alexander felt the burden of destiny
101. crushing down his shoulders from Heaven
102. and then he said with a shaking jaw
103. "how am I supposed to know the road,
104. if I never heard of your ancestors before?
105. and how I am supposed to reveal the secret
106. if I do not know what you are talking about?
107. help me O good old man in my task
108. may God help you to succeed in the good ways"
109. Náwi established his words with the praise of God
110. and said to Alexander: O young man, did God forget you before?
111. or did He give you a false promise before?
112. No! Thus you shall walk by His grace and mercy
113. like He made you a sun and moons to guide you
114. through the deserts He will never forget you
115. stay with us for three days and be prepared
116. then go on to your journey with your destiny
117. the prophecies there were made will not lie
118. go and fear nothing O Vuqurnún
119. thus Alexander decided to stay for three days
120. while the hermits prepared him for his journey

Alexander 2, V4.

Some enhancement with the mood, but I had to receive some bad news from the press with my model for the brochure that I made for work. I have to make the fonts smaller and blacken them out just to fit their machines. Anyway, this is supposed to be some "easy" task to do... if only I would find the original PSD file of this brochure.
I couldn't believe my eyes when Fotolia rejected my 2 images of the dome, claiming that they have aesthetic problems. I just can't understand what those people are asking for? Anyway, Canstockphoto accepted the 2 photos and that's fair enough. I'm waiting for a reply from Bigstockphotos as well. They surprised me indeed when they accepted 2 of 3 from my shots from the parking lot in Soog Sharg!

Rejected

Accepted

 Accepted

After accepting these 2 images, I revived my hopes in them. And I used to think that they are worse than Fotolia in their conditions! Pah! It would be somehow a disappointment if they rejected the dome photos... and since no luck is my friend, then they would reject them eventually!

Back to the images from Ireland now, and as I finished the folder of 1-10-2009, I'm checking the special subfolders that I usually keep for panoramas taken on that specific day, and they were a lot. I'm hesitated on wether should I spend more time fixing the errors in these images or just do the easy stuff and move on and come back later one day to these! Apparently, the noise problem that I just noticed a month ago and picked my camera for sensor cleaning for it was apparent in the photos taken back then, but for some reason I didn't notice them at all. But with the new panorama that I've made, I've noticed how much spots were there...

The previous image was cleaned from spots and noise with cloning stamp in HDR state before the tone-mapping. Also, I added layers of hue and saturation adjustments to make the colors more bluish and fanciful with some greenish hue for the trees. Honestly, the image looked perfect to my eyes just like that without tone-mapping. However, I made the tone-mapping with Photomatix and not in Photoshop, because in such abundant details and wide image, I tend to make lot of mistakes with the manual job. I was surprised though with the amount of noise that appeared after the tone-mapping that neither NeatImage nor NoiseNinja did any good in removing it! For this reason, I kept this image for myself. It looks better in small size, but in actual size, it is horrible. Thus, I did not submit it to Canstockphoto (and that's why I didn't put any watermarks on it). If you want to use it, please go ahead, just give the credits, please.

I'm trying my best to sharpen the image in the HDR state before tone-mapping, as I read and learned from Mr Christian Bloch's book about HDR imaging, but this option seems not so very useful to do, at least for my images. When I sharp and watch the sharpening artifacts show up (by checking the higher EVs of the image in HDR state), I do reduce the amount of sharpening and the radius and they become so low that, eventually, you see no sharpening effect in front of you at all! Thus, why use it? I guess doing the sharpening after the tone-mapping is better in my case. Sharpening too much without taking care of the artifacts and the color noise at the edges in HDR state, would make tone-mapping later on a bad experiment with weird spots of colors showing every where.

My work with transliteration today would be limited to one verse only I guess. I've discovered some confusion in my present tense make-up (the last syllable of the 4-letters verb). For example, "to leave" is (ğaţbaš), now to make the present for 1st person - I leave - it would be (ağaţbiš), but then some verbs I wrote like (ağaţbaš) and that made me some confusion in the matter. It is a serious mistake that makes me think of all the previous writings and transliterations that I did before. I might have to check them seriously and see any corrections that appeal. I hate this when it happens. Moreover, it might make me record some stuff again, which I thought I've finished already.

For the time being, I'm going to check what I transliterated already from Alexander VI story, and hope no mistakes would show up in the future. At least in grammar that is.

For today, we have Alexander 2, verse 4.

__________

The tidings of the ill omen travelled like lightning
the king killed the messenger for no right or wrong
Thus, Alexander raised his eyes up to the sky and prayed
with tears on the cheeks for the poor man he sent
"O Lord, what to do, I obeyed and listened
but the devilish ones accepted nothing but evil
By Your might I come and go, live and die
guide me through this and do not let me go astray"
Then the voice came down to Alexander
and only he could hear it in his ears from above
"O Alexander, by My power you shall succeed,
and with the light of Mishdárá you shall go on
We know what happens, and happened and what will
go and victory is yours, this is a test for you and your men"
Thus, Alexander got down from the mare and bowed down
to the Almighty, the Giver of life, the Giver of might
Then to his soldiers he looked and organized
and spread the twelve generals across his eyes
Chinchán, Ishkán, Chírán, Érán to his right
Dómí, Tólímí, Kahrímí, Gehámí to his left
Then Shakrashom, Dartalom, Keríhom come
along with Galgolom, they were in his front
While the bugles of war screamed so high
for the blood scattering and for men's valour