Kika X…

How silly was it for me to make a post without an introduction the last time! I guess I was in a bit of a hurry to finish whatever I can in time. Anyway, I don't think there is any important stuff to spill out in the introduction, but I really wanted to make another little announcement. But well, I guess I don't need a special section for this little one, so here we go.
I've lately uploaded my bubbles collection to my Canstockphoto (which you find by clicking the signature at the end of the post) and now I've posted "some" of these images (and some few more outside the series) into my 123RF profile. I say "some" here because some images from this series were not accepted for one reason or another. Thus, the full series is actually available (so far) ONLY on Canstockphoto. I don't know much about the pricing of each website but just in case you want to compare, go ahead. Some people have one account in one and not the other anyway. As for Dreamstime, I never received any email concerning this type of upload or series or any single response, thus I have not uploaded there at all. 

 

Kika X

And up with the 10^th week of Kika's photo-challenge. At this time, I got occupied pretty much with many things, specially helping my brother with his studied. Thus, my mind was not "that" free for much inspirational work. Mind was all over the place. This,in fact, would be the situation till the end of the series of Kika's photo-challenge.
The theme for Week 10 was "light." As usual, since I didn't have the proper time to take new photos, I've searched my arsenal and I couldn't find any better than one particular shot that had a special kind of light…

Boihéamach
(bohemian)

I love this selfie because of the light in use here. It was lit with a single candle (and posted about it back in 2019 and started a project then to portraits with one candle only). Beside the quality of the light here, it was shot in infrared (hence the blue tint and eye). I was lucky here to pinpoint the focus on the eye on my own; It was a lengthy process of trial and error! However, just so I won't be re-posting a photo just like that without any edit or any effort for the theme, I've decided to do a minor adjustment. So minor but with a huge impact: Contrast.

Boihéamach (2)

The difference is drastic and made me wonder: Why didn't I do this in the first place when I first processed this image? Probably, then, I was way too dependent on the histogram and feared going out of the gamut. The contrast here was fixed simply by using the black dropper in the Curve adjustment layer box and using it to set the black point of the image as a whole from a spot near the face (or the eye's pupil).
The image became more dramatic and more drastic and I'd say more Rambrandt-ish after this fix of the contrast, with apparently uplifting the blue tint from the whole image.
I think I really need to detach myself from perfection with histogram. A lesson to be learned in my future work; If my memory and habits serve me right. So, this far is my only contribution for Kika's Week 10 challenge: Light. 

 

Back-on-Villea

So at this time, of March still, I went back to the yard trying to catch some more "extreme" macro shots, and this time for the Bougainvillea. Or should I say, Bougainvillea's blooms. This plant really proved to be hard to work with because of its stiff branch (and thorns!) and a lot of the things that I wanted to try before did fail because of the breeze, wind, or the hard-to-reach pose. 

Hyperstigma

The stigma or central part of the bougainvillea bloom is quite interesting with its cinquefoil-like shape. However, unfortunately, the magnification I was using (4.2X) was way greater than what it should be and there was no time to change and experiment (again!) so I went on and tried to shoot whatever I could. Hyperstigmata here was shot from the top and directly onto the stigma but generally speaking, it is not quite clear and blurry. Probably good for a small size representation but definitely not a large size one. Seems even with a speedlite at hand and at 1/250 of a second, motion blur outside is yet to be conquered.

Stigma Profile

Stigma Profile II

Ironically, despite not being able to shoot the stigma right on, I was able to shoot a "profile" from the side (or behind). In Stigma Profile I and II, the effect of the direction of the light is obvious. It helped on creating an isolation of the foreground without much effort; Just by tilting the speedlite at hand just a little bit!

Stamen Head

Pinkoid

Same thing goes on with the stamen part of the flower, where changing the direction of the light did change the looks drastically (and the feel as well). I kind of find it comical that the masculine part of the flower comes out in such dominant pink, in Pinkoid; A color usually assigned to the feminine nature. Anyway, the bloom itself is pinkish/magenta in color, with all its inner parts. I was amazed to know that there are indeed bougainvillea varieties with white (and probably blue?) flowers! Would be nice to have them side by side with these pink/magenta ones. The plant though is quite random and needs special treatment to let it grow in some organized manner. Needless to say, we plant them in small pots right now, so, they wouldn't grow much like the one we planted long ago when we first settled in this then-new home. Nevertheless, the branches and the blooms do just fine as they are. 

Stigma Furnace

Back to the stigma and with changing lighting conditions again, seems I got something acceptable in Stigma Furnace. However, this result was not possible without editing; A heavy one as well. This said, there are still a number of images that I didn't touch or check thoroughly. A quick look at some of these didn't yield much impression on me but probably another visit to those again, with some cropping and "surreal" editing techniques, I might get out with something out of them.

 

Finale

As I'm typing this blog post, and specially the introduction up there, I've realized that there are a number of promises that I've made and which seems like that I've "ditched". Like the one time that I wanted to do more of the old panoramas in a new suit and upload them to Mostphotos. However, lately, my psyche had a great toll on me. Maybe some, who would read these lines, would consider it such an exaggeration to talk about the mental status in the finale of every post, but all I can say is, I really don't wish to see you in such a place, in your minds. The exhaustion of fighting off such mental issues is quite physical. Sprinkle that with back pains, and you would get such a lovely combination of stalemate.
I am in a phase of life at the moment that I really don't know what I want, where to go, or where am I going. Yes, I have few wishes, but under the current circumstances they are kind of far fetched. In fact, even those wishes I'm wishing and hoping for, probably won't make me any more dedicated or goal-oriented, nor grant me happiness. Something within is very tired.

Fire and Water…

Weather is cooling down! Oh my what a relief! Sunrise is getting late few minutes by each day and thus I'm leaving to work every morning while it's dark somehow, and it will be darker and darker soon. I love the atmosphere, if not for some of the stupidity on the road of course. I just hope that this winter would not pass without some outside work with the camera, again. Anyway, as a continuation

Tine Agus Uisce

If you are wondering about the meaning of the subtitle here, it just means Fire and Water and you will know why just now, After finishing my work with dice and water, I thought maybe I should do another thing before I move away my gear from the set. And it occurred to me: Why not candles? Surely we can have some action by that, right? Besides, I do have a bunch of candles left around which I bought for some other project in the past and I hate to see them collecting dust like that for nothing! So here we go…

Aqua-Sword

Aqua-Meteor

Initially, the idea was to capture the moment just before the candle's flame goes off by a blow of air. I used a compressed air canister for that. However, where is the action in that? So, right away, I've decided to change my work to include water and fire. Working with water here is a bit dangerous because it might get sprinkled around the set and all that (which it did) but small amounts of that from a syringe hurt no one, I think! And so, the game began trying to capture the right time manually. The good thing about using a syringe is the change in angles now and then, trying to get different perspectives and different action. The hard thing was, though, is getting the sprinkled water right on the flame, which caused many shots have out of focus droplets, sometimes beyond repair and not serving the image in general at all, somehow like Aqua-Meteor, but I like this one somehow.
The depth of field here ranged between f/4 to f/5.6, despite the usage of a macro lens; Canon EF 100mm Macro USM. I lowered the f-number here for two main reasons:

• Even though using 6 speedlites, I thought of lowering the power consumption to have even a shorter "flash duration" which I thought it would be better somehow to capture more precise moments. This of course requires allowing more light in by increasing the ISO or lowering the f-number, and so it was the second (while ISO was fixed at 200).
• The background contained some metallic bar which I couldn't cover, and increasing the depth of field (i.e. increasing the f-number) would cause it to be quite obvious and hard to fix later in Photoshop. In fact, it was already problematic in some shots at this f/5.6.

Der Kampf
One of the shots where
water droplets were not
stable enough even at
the speed of 8000^-1s.

All shots were taken at 1/8000 of a second for the shutter speed and this time I didn't try to gamble with the shutter speed. Yet, I think I do need more than 1/8000s to stabilize the water movement further from what I saw in the final results. I think I will do some research about available tricks to overpass this speed in high speed photography techniques. ِAnother problem was there to be dealt with which was the changing level of the candle flame itself (because of melting). So, it was a work of lowering and raising the tripod's neck (central column) and re-focusing, and forgetting to focus already for some shots. In fact, I've tried to make it a habit for me to check the focus after every shot I made in that session. Anyhow, seems I really need to work on that background in the future, in case I'm working in such set, in such place, again.



Luckily, this set of shots was accepted right away without any refusal on Canstockphoto and on Dreamstime. Probably by the time you are reading this you would be seeing some of these images in my signature frame below the post. Now, there is one more idea which I wish to do at some time but not sure when (priority goes to photo shooting more than editing) and that is to combine several of these recent shots and make new ones of various combination of fire, water and smoke. I'm sure it would be such a delicate work and probably I won't produce much images that way, but it is worth trying.

Finale

Well, on a side note, after more than a year of stopping posts on Instagram (and I mean photos, not posts related to my Ayvarith conlang on @Ayvarith), I've started to slowly post back. But this time I won't be paying attention to that stupid platform. Some people welcomed me in fact with my first post after the stop. An encouraging sign but still I didn't put much effort into that. Beside that, I've posted once a day only (so far as I'm typing this 2 photos were posted). I used post at least twice a day back when I was active there. In fact, I've even considered having a third new account to post stuff from scratch but I've forgot about this idea and decided to go back to my old account. This time though, no following, no like for like; Just nothing. I'm posting there, and whoever wants to, can give a like and leave. It would depend on my mood and my schedule as well. So, posts won't be schedules as before and I'm already planning to stop posting in some days if I have to.
In the meantime, thoughts about my life and destination is still a recurring idea in my mind. I'm not sure I do have a goal and despite about all what I hear, from all these motivational speakers, about the importance of setting a goal; I still feel that it is all nothing but rubbish. Not aiming to disregard what other people feel about themselves or the things they feel important but I'm seriously in the status of not finding any value; Specially in these societal standards and hypocrisy necessities. There is a feeling going inside when I see newspapers, TV, two people talking, something strange just tells me all that is an act. All are nothing but actors...
Just a final thought, I've made an astrological reading (paid) and one of the questions I've asked was about career or career path and what is best for me in general. I have to say that the reading in general blew me away and the lady did pin the nature of my current work without telling her anything about it. It seems I do have to focus away from the scientific field indeed. She said things will take time to find out and to get along and find the real passion in my life - well, after all the information she gave out about me (even about my delayed speech problem when I was a child), I tend to believe her in fact. Maybe then all these motivational stuff that people have the vibe with currently would make some sense to me? We'll see. For the time being, I really just want to enjoy "some" of my life; Just as she said as well.

تلاقي (Meeting)

Collective…

As a starter, I'm really not sure how am I typing this blog post with my continuous sleeping problems which are adorned with marvelous migraines from time to time during this week. Anyway, since I don't have much material for this post, I think it will be somewhat a quickie one.
In a continuation for my previous post, I'm still working on my project of shooting profiles (side shot) in infrared using only a candle. I'm not sure if I've mentioned this in my previous post, but I've decided to call this project The Candle People. Things are now out of the profiles section as well, and I've started to shoot some face-front shots as well, upon request.

Abdullah A. (profile)

Abdullah A. (halfie)

So far, there had been only two requests to re-do the candle shots and change the profile look to the face-front look. Both from nephews. My first nephew did not like the look of his nose in such profile. Well, I guess many people are displeased with their noses nowadays (me included but I don't tend to hide it). However, I'm not expecting from people to understand the artistic values the way I see it through. In profile shots, I do appreciate the contour and the dramatic light and look of the face rather than the "beauty" of the person. Personally, beauty has nothing to do with this little project of mine. It is about evoking emotions via light and contour with no or little facial expressions. However, I've complied to the request and I still like the results. My first trial with him was to shoot a "halfie", but this halfie is not exactly done by cropping the face (even though it is a little) but by implying heavy shadows to half of the face (mainly by editing). This halfie might have a strange effect on the size of the eye here; I didn't change the size of the eye while editing, but it seems to me that is kind of large. Might be my imagination?

Abdullah A. (front)

Anyway, the other frontal shot here for Abdullah A was not exactly a halfie. Too bad though I had to crop a little too much here to balance the image because while shooting (using burst mode) the head was moving and one of the ears did not show completely in the image, which in turn forced me to crop a little from the other (and that meant cropping from the whole image and just from the side because I tend to keep the aspect ratio). On purpose here, I told my nephew to look up which I think gives a better emotional expression (at work with the forehead lines). To have some dramatic look (or to increase it so to say) I've resorted to an old technique which involves the usage of the High Pass filter in Photoshop. This of course exaggerated the noise level as well but I didn't bother to clean much of it here because the image in the first place is not intended to be "soft" in looks. This look, upward, seems to be a "hack" on its own to have a dramatic look. I've applied already with my other nephew who requested a re-shoot and seems to be OK. As I'm typing this there are still some from this series that needs to be processed yet.

Collective Ideas

Meanwhile, as I'm trying to work on the Candle People project, a flow of ideas somehow ticked my mind lately. At some level, I think the Candle People is one of these projects that just doesn't have a dead line. But it is ongoing whenever the chance shows up. Anyway, meanwhile, I think I will be back to one of my old passions, and it is a tiresome one actually, and that is: High Speed photography.
I didn't formulate a concrete idea about the subject but I'm intending to use the full set of speedlites in my arsenal (7 at the moment). I didn't make up my mind yet about how to set them up, but I think there would be two main methods or sets: a) Manual, and b) With an external trigger.

General scheme for the setup

First of all, sorry for the bad sketch here (and the bad scanning, done with my mobile in bad lighting conditions). As you can see here, this is the intended general setup that I'm thinking of for method A; the manual shooting. What I mean by manual shooting here is that I would control the camera manually with a master speedlite light on it to control other speedlites on the set. Meanwhile, the master will not shoot, but only responsible to give out the command to shoot to the slave speedlites. What I'm intending to do here is (and let's hope it works out well), is to use a very low flash power (if I can, lower than 1/32) and try to shoot using burst mood in hope that the low power consumption at this level of power would help on quick recycling and re-shooting quickly. I wouldn't know if this will work until I try! It would be a shame if it doesn't work that way though because with such number of speedlites, things could be balanced out somehow. Of course the position of the speedlites and direction is subject to change accordingly when the practical work is ongoing.
As for method B, the same schematic above applies, but the master speedlite is placed on the set as well and would be connected to a trigger. A laser trigger (which I failed using before). In previous times, I've used this trigger in connection to the camera itself but researching a bit and asking some professionals, I figured that the lag time (the time for the signal to travel from the trigger to the camera) is considerably long, making capturing the exact moment quite hard. Most professionals, as it seems, connect the trigger to the speedlite and not the camera and thus reducing the lag time considerably. I can connect one master to be triggered in that way and set others to slaves and all should (theoretically) shoot about the same moment. However, in this method, I'm supposed to leave the shutter open and work on the subject and speedlites with the trigger. For this, such method must be done in a dark environment, or maybe some ND filter on the lens would do? Not sure. We'll see about that. And like the situation in method A, the power is supposed to be set low for a quick recycling time and low power consumption.
Thinking about it, just theoretically, it seems that method A is favorable, despite my wish to get my old trigger working again since I failed using it many times. But if the burst mode works well in such setup, then things are set and I don't think I will try method B. The hardest part though remain: To setup my gear to work!

Finale

Beside the idea mentioned above, I'm thinking of other things as well but no need to put all the eggs in one basket. There had been also some simple shootings with my mobile for some geological stuff around my workplace and I've even uploaded one of the images to the stocks. I didn't upload to them in a long time.
With me now putting the contest on Duolingo behind my back, after some incidence of cheating as I've discovered, I've realized now the big mistake I've done in using this platform. I'm now trying to be more at ease and back to learn the language on my own pace instead of trying to gain more points and be leading the "score board" (or whatever they call it). In fact, I've had more time to post some articles in the Arabic forum after deserting the forum for quite a while. I've realized now how people do appreciate these posts which have some delicate matters and tips about Arabic that Duolingo is not providing for those who really want to learn the language. This made me think: What is really made for me? What I'm really supposed to do? I think this appreciation and this enthusiasm is the answer. Thinking about it, what did I really gain from being #1 on these leaderboard contests or whatever? Nothing but stress. While the solution was quite easy but I didn't see it back then; To leave these contests and focus on education and learning, and teaching those who need to. After turning off the "public" settings on Duolingo (which removes the leading board and all these scores stuff), I do feel such a relief. I have no more time and more organization capability for my time. I won't regret this.
Now, it's time to post this and go and figure my next move. A poem, or a new photo, or maybe a new article for the Arabic Duolingo forum. I can't believe it is weekend already. I'm perplexed as to whether I should sleep more, or work more on the things I like to do. or maybe play more. Two days for a weekend are just not enough… Not enough to forget what I need to forget out of my life…

By A Candle…

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

Remains

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

بقايا إنسان (Remains of Man)
Click to enlarge

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

Candle People

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

Candle Selfie

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

Boihéamach (Bohemian)

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

Boihéamach (details)

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

Abdullah F.

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

Jassim H.

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

Finale

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

Ar Ais Arís…

I'm back after a "little" vacation of my own, during some holidays as well as working days in fact wit a lot of sleeping upheaval, as usual. This post won't be much actually but just to announce my return! Well, if anyone cares anyway.
So, in this post, I barely have this selfie which I've shot in the first hour of August 17^th, and turning 39. I think I've made a new tradition of my own, to take a selfie with every birthday, in the first hours of it. The selfie (or self-portrait as some make a distinction between the two) was shot using Voigtländer 20mm lens (my favorite for the time being) and using a candle to light my face. My hand is not strong as before so it was a bit shaky and a bit out of focus (naturally using a wide aperture). With the help of the white balance as well, the image came out orange or bronze somewhat in color. I like the color but I have to be honest, I really hate the overall quality. It might look good in such a small size but it's not so in the original size. For this reason, I've promised myself to do some other selfie and using the candle light as well at some other time. Meanwhile, I did indeed take other selfies, with the same style, but this time using LED torch or flashlight.

Shot this right after having a shower (good thing I didn't catch a cold, yet) and used a small LED torch. Despite its size, it was such a powerful source in fact, and I've reflected the light off the wall but still there were some white areas that were out of details (because of the hard reflections from the water-soaked skin). This shot was taken with my Huawei Mate 9, so I had little control here. The only virtue I had here is the lightweight of the device. So, in a nutshell, this one, too, is not to my liking. I had other selfies which are a bit personal or occasional rather than artistic so I'm not going to post them here anyway. This said, I'm in fact about to work on a new idea regarding a selfie or a self-portrait as I'm typing this but I didn't finish it yet. Not sure how it will turn out but hopefully things will go as planned and I'd be able to post it by a week after the next.
Slowly now trying to get up on my feet again, specially after finishing off with the Huawei contest and my mind is ready to receive other ideas. I have to say though that such a contest really did some work on my brain and I'm not afraid to use my mobile phone to shoot, but definitely not as a substitution for my regular work with my DSLR and my passion for it.
I've worked already with some abstract concepts as well (on macro level) so we'll see if there is anything about it to be posted later on. Alas, I do miss my work with panoramas, but where to shoot in this place? The need to travel is arising and I'm still not sure about my decisions yet. First, let me fix this damn sleeping pattern…

Light Me!

It has been a quick holiday, and I really need some more of it; to sleep, and to work with my camera a bit. Nonetheless, I managed to work a bit with my camera and specifically fixing an image that I've posted in my previous post, after getting some notes from my brother about it. As for the rest of the time, I've been either dozing off or working with selfies and filters, but with a twist!

Re-Make

As I've mentioned, I had to try out and fix an image that I've posted here previously since I got some notes about it. Without going into details, but the main aspect of change in the shoot is to change the light source, using the candle alone instead of speedlites as was previously done.

وفوق كل ذي علم عليم (1)
"and over every lord of knowledge He is knowing" (12:76)
Done with speedlites in HSS.

وفوق كل ذي علم عليم (2)
"and over every lord of knowledge He is knowing" (12:76) - II
Change in perspective and using candle light alone.

I have to say that I really like the second version; Not only for its dramatic appearance and the play of light, but the perspective (as per my brother's suggestion) did add to the difference, which I think is quite interesting. In fact, in my chase after landscapes and architecture I've realized the importance of shooting with non-ordinary angles of view to keep the image being interesting (somewhat excluding panoramas since it doesn't work all the time with this art). However, it seems I've totally forgot about this concept when it came down to still life images like this. I'll try to remember that next time (and I'll try to remember to remember next time); go figure! Being satisfied about this shot did not stop me from doing some other experiments with the same set as well.

وفوق كل ذي علم عليم (3)
"and over every lord of knowledge He is knowing" (12:76) - III
B+W 403 UV filter with hot mirror.

Since I didn't use the Ultraviolet 403 filter in a long time now, I've decided to put it in action here despite the fact that, after checking the typical spectra for candles, it seems that candles do not issue much of UV radiation (if any at all), but anyway, I've decided to try. To add some charisma here, I've decided to do some HDR bracketing which required me to raise the ISO a bit (to 400). Focusing the set was a tricky business since the filter was opaque. Anyway, I've managed to make the third shot above by bracketing 3 shots and merging them into HDR. The flare was quite hideous and even controlling the parameters in tone-mapping the HDR couldn't help in suppressing these artifacts. However, there are these blue lines which emerge from the candle (not really emerging here), and that is an artifact I've noticed its presence when using UV or H-Alpha filters, with or without hot mirror, when working in LiveView mode specifically. They disappear when I work in a regular way. Not sure what is the mechanism that works behind such artifact but in this instance it was quite desirable to add a bit of magic to the scene. The high ISO played a great role in increasing the noise which was hard to clean (but reduced a bit).

وفوق كل ذي علم عليم (4)
"and over every lord of knowledge He is knowing" (12:76) - IV.
B+W 403 UV filter with hot mirror.

In the third shot, the white balance was not calibrated in-camera but was left on Auto. In the fourth shot, however, I've managed to calibrate the white balance with such hard filter (even though I'm working with a fully converted camera here), and also put down the ISO back to 100. To eliminate those lines emerging above the candle, I had to work in a regular way without LiveView. With that sprung the idea of doing HDR bracketing but using long exposures like I used to do some years back during my regular visit to the seaside through winter nights. So I did, and started at around 8 minutes and halving the value with each exposure until reaching 30 seconds. The more exposures, the merrier, since that will provide a smoother "histogram" of data for the light levels. The result in the 4^th seems more pleasing than the 3^rd with the absence of these distraction lines above the candle, but nevertheless, I still had to crop a big portion out to remove the flare. The matter of flares was there in all attempts, but having a filter and a hot mirror on top of it increased the internal reflection which made the matter worse. Let's hope I would not have to shoot directly at a light source again!

Candle Selfies

It all started with testing the H-Alpha filter, and the easiest subject to think of when testing is, actually, my face. Things, however, evolved later on.

Hl-Alpha filter + hot mirror.
430EX II speedlite on camera left with oval diffuser.
Voigtländer 20mm.

Ovel (Globe) diffuser from Impact.
Source: B&H

My first experiment with the speedlite was fruitful if I can call it so, because it provided some insight into this simple light modifier, the oval diffuser from Impact. Anyway, this is not the core of this text right now, but shooting a selfie with speedlite is surely an easy task, because I got to speed up the shutter speed and kill the ambient light significantly (and hide the messy background effectively!). I think I just needed a reflector to the left of my face to bounce back some light and light the shadows a bit, but well, this is dramatic enough as it is and nicely sharp (later, while processing, I've sharpened the front eye specifically in Photoshop). But since I was going on with ِAugust project about books (which for I've taken the shots posted above), I've decided here to try and use the candle light only to light my face and check the general outlook. I have to say, I'm quite impressed despite the simplicity and the technical limitations for such light.

Candle Selfie 1
H-Alpha filter + Hot mirror.

Through out these selfies, I've always used Voigtländer 20mm lens, which is my favorite right now for many tasks, be it macro (on reverse) or other styles, even selfies. Despite being a wide-angle lens and, usually, such lenses are not used for proper portraiture shots. But the fact that I was so close to the settings and its capability of focusing at minimum distance of 20cm made it a plausible option; adding to that the fact that my camera is a cropped-frame camera and it eliminates much of the periphery (20mm on 1.6x cropped frame is equivalent to 32mm). However, my first trial was with the Night Sky filter, H-Alpha, and a hot mirror (Tiffen's) placed on top.
Using an external LCD monitor connected via the HD input of the camera, I was able to manage the focusing issue pretty easily with this filter. Needless to say, I had to do a white balance calibration before shooting the selfie (and it should be calibrated with a candle in front of the lens because this is the variety of light I will be using to shoot). The result? Mesmerizing. I really loved the looks. The candle light, despite being simple and kind of hard to deal with somehow (I had to work in completely dark room and find my way through the mess), but the light itself is not "pointed," that is, it is not concentrated into a beam as it is the case with speedlites, thus it can be considered as a diffused light on its own, even though it is a weak source. Placing the candle typically under my chin level produced the so-called "horror light" but in some diffused manner which it made it, let's say, less horrific.

Candle Selfie 2
B+W 092 infrared filter.

One observation about the usage of H-Alpha filter with a hot mirror is that images are slightly like infrared when processed but with darker tones and I've found out later, from checking various transmission charts for such filter, that using a hot mirror on top of it is actually not a good practice because this filter operates around the range of Reds and above (in sense of wavelengths) which extends to the infrared range. Anyway, The first shot inspired me to use the infrared filter, namely the B+W 092 infrared filter.
I picked this filter specifically because it has a low threshold (at around 650nm) which gives some colorful results at times, unlike the Kodak infrared filter which has a high threshold (about 1000nm); The higher the threshold, the closer the image to B&W it would look. In Candle Selfie 2, I had to get even closer to the lens and with some cropping I was able to hide the flame. Probably this selfie is the best, but this was not the end of the story.

Top Row: H-Alpha + hot mirror.
Low Row: B+W 092 infrared.
Left column: originals.
Right column: Red-Blue channel swaps.

I couldn't pass the chance of all this work with these filters without trying at least one swap; the most common being Red-Blue channel swap. That produced some interesting results as well as seen above. All images here (and those before) were processed to reduce some of the flare. As I've stated before, flares are quite common and natural when the light source is in front of the lens, and that's why my beard specifically in the infrared shot looks colored; this actually had been caused by a light spot which I've tried to reduce its presence in the process (it was more saturated and lighter). I've tried to take some selfies using the B+W 403 Ultraviolet filter plus hot mirror but this is another story, maybe for another post.
Conclusion: despite its weakness as a light source, candle light is a pretty interesting and a dramatic source of light. It provides a somewhat diffused light look, but not necessarily light shadows as it is with properly diffused light (from flash or others). I'm definitely going to consider candles in other projects when I get the chance to. One set back though, it would mostly need a dark room (unless the photo idea is not about using the candle light and its dramatic look).

Finale

My experiments are going on still and there is a lot going on at the back of my head. I'm keeping some material for the next posts in the weeks to come as I don't want to put all eggs in one basket here.
I think old age is creeping to me indeed as my body is not what it used to be and I'm getting tired easily; The light time I can find to work with my camera would be a hard time resisting a nap! Is it a lack of motivation or it is indeed my body which is hitting a low. Anyway, I'll have some quiet to myself in the next 3 days with the family going out to some resort, and hopefully I can manage to work more with my camera.
All this work with my camera, which is really some experimenting after all and not a trial to make a fine art, seems to be my way to escape my anxiety and my panic attacks. It doesn't work all the time but it is after all some productive. Things at work, despite being quiet at the moment, it is yet loathsome and sometimes I get a darkened vision about the future of this place, and again I try to get my mind back to the tracks and avoid believing in things that did not happen yet. I'm clinging more, as days pass by, to the past and the sweet memories of the old times. The present, and future, are quite repulsive to me right now. Many people I like and love are disappearing or simply leaving and I can't do much about it, except to watch it. It is the law of life, I know, but these things were, and are, the only lovely things as I remember.  I miss me, so much…