Darling…

I think I was supposed to take a break from blogging for a week or two for the new year? I'm not sure; But I've been into making some photos and I thought maybe it's time to post about them. I'm typing this as I'm on a vacation from work until January 9^th. Typical, though and unfortunately, I've been lazy with my camera work as usual with any vacation that I take. But I'm trying!
Some of these trials are simple and my main aim was to go out at night and shoot but it seems I have no chance, specially with this exhausted body of mine. Some incident (not a serious one) happened as I was out with my brother outside close to midnight around the beach area where I used to practice and do many shots long time ago, and I realized there are still nosy people who would just grab any stranger to chat with; Something I really find irritating for my night outgoing and my peace of mind at such hours of the night. This little incident kind of held me back a little and I'm hesitant now. Needless to say, my sleeping pattern is a mess during this little vacation but nevertheless, I'm relaxed because I have no obligations in the early morning hours. Anyway, let's see what was achieved.

Darling

After doing my previous shot, The Beggar of Nothingville, which was inspired by a poem of the same name, I've had another idea at the back of my head, which was already planned in B&W as well. This shot, however, is more like a starter or a dedication for the new year (sort of). Despite its simplicity, shooting it was not as easy as The Beggar of Nothingville (relatively). To make the shot this time I had to use my wireless tethering with Case Air tethering tool which I didn't use for quite a while (not even for The Beggar of Nothingville). Working was a hassle and I was about to cancel the whole thing.

Case Air for wireless tethering

Happy New Year, Darling

First of all, the idea of the shot is about these things that we love, care for, and appreciate, but unfortunately we are forced to leave behind. Despite its title, Happy New Year, Darling, the shot is not really specific to the new year - But the term "new year" is used symbolically to signify these new beginnings; Well, some beginnings that I might be willing or wish to start with (or not). This is the philosophical side of the shoot. Now, back to the technical.
I've proceeded with my 50mm lens, as I thought it is the "norm" for such a shot, but thinking about it now, probably I should have used 20mm to give myself some more space and crop later. However, all worked well in the end but after quite some trials and errors. It was one of these experiments in which I've got a bit upset for not finding someone to help me. Holding the problematic props in one hand and the mobile phone to control the camera via wireless tethering was indeed a great distraction. The props consisted of a little cut branch and a small broken cup (my niece made that and broke it!) and since I didn't find any soft sand around, I've decided to use some Ovaltine instead; After all, the image will be in B&W and the real material of the soil is not important, right?

For those who
don't know what
Ovaltine is!

The shoot was done over the span of 2 or 3 days with many issues. Mainly, the level of my hand and how clear is the broken cup. Despite the somewhat natural gesture in Happy New Year, Darling, the pose was hard to be done for me as I had to twist and stretch my arm and palm. Adding to that, the little branch would fall often and it was not possible to stabilize over the soft Ovaltine. When I created a shot that I like, I've realized after examining the photo on screen that the most important part of the image, the plant, was out of focus. Despite many trials later, nothing really worked as I like.

Source
A book I'm re-reading recently.

However, and thanks to some of my recent reading in Learning to Photograph Vol. 2, I've decided to settle down with the version seen above despite the slight cut in the thumb. Another reason, beside the incomplete thumb, that made me go over this shot in the beginning, is that the little plant was not straight up. All in all, I can't say that I'm absolutely satisfied with this shot but I have to (or had to), because in some way this is a kind of "perfectionism suppression" that I need to practice because otherwise I won't finish a single job or idea I get into my mind. Moreover, as per Learning to Photograph, it turns out that a slight cut like that to any shape (specially circles) works on anchoring the image, or in other words, as if the image is stabilized, or it does start, from this anchor point and forward. This is a somewhat psychological effect to be perceived by most. Bearing these aspects in mind, I've decided to pick this image which was one of the earlier trials to make this shot. I was hoping to shoot in natural light and I've picked a specific room in the house specially just because of the quality of the light coming through the window. However, unfortunately, and because of my laziness, I couldn't be there in the early morning to shoot and use the daytime to perfect the shot with daylight; So, I had to get some help from a speedlite (430EX II) which was not a big deal. Just pointed it to the side wall with its 14mm panel to get a wide-angled beam and bounce it back to somewhat mimic the effect of natural light through the window. This also helped with the shutter speed a bit to make things faster a bit (something essential with my shaky body!). The color cast of the speedlite is not important (not completely) after all since the image is to be converted into B&W.

The Diagonal Method

Probably it is noticeable how the image is sort of elongated a bit and does not go under the conventional or most common ratio of 3:2 (at least for my DSLR). Actually processing this image did require some valor, and some challenge to my perfectionism trend (again). Meanwhile, I recalled that I've installed a special plugin for my old Photoshop which helps on cropping on various systems, such as the golden ratio and the golden spiral. One of these rules is The Diagonal Method, developed by a Dutch photographer, namely Edwin Westhoff, after studying many artworks. Now, the special thing about this method is the claim that important or significant points of interest for the viewer are not single concrete points of intersection, but rather interesting subjects can be placed along diagonals which stem from hypothetical squares within the frame (see the link above). You can see how that works on the side, and instead of keeping the aspect ratio the same, I've cropped freely without keeping the ratio and placed the lower central point on the plant. I had to crop my head a bit to remove any distraction or dominance on that side. Now, the rest of the work is simply toning down the colors in B&W making the Greens as bright as possible along with the contrast, and many, many, many layers of dodge and burn! And… the story is over.

Finale

Well, I really wanted to post another shoot and new venture with mirror lens, though simple but I think I've blabbered a lot here that I guess no need to lengthen this post some more! In fact, this might just give me the time to do one last experiment with this mirror lens which I was planning to do with my brother but I didnt for the lack of time. I was thinking of shooting a selfie of me by this lens with the help of Case Air but that would be even more troublesome than it is already. But, it is still an idea to consider.
Now, my vacation is coming to an end, I need to re-organize my life after living clueless for a while. Going back still feels like a burden though but good thing that my toothache is almost gone, even though I can really bite on that side, but the pain disappeared, thanks to my sister and her knowledge in traditional medicine. The thing that is left for me now, to find a direction…

Reflections…

Well, unfortunately, this will be kind of quick here since I was lazy in the past 2 weeks but nevertheless I'm trying to do something, along with the endless sleeping problems! I'm now being optimistic about a venture in astrophotography, but I'm not sure of it yet and I'm still doing experiments on that side of the photography spectrum. I wanted to show some results here but unfortunately that didn't work and many things kept me from working fast (some off them related to the rains and the weather). Anyway, I was able to work on one image, indoors, and I'd like to talk about it here.

Reflections

To begin with, I had this idea for a long time actually and I tried to work with it a bit but stopped because of the "conditions." Now, however, I've persisted little bit and with the help of my new acquired Case Air tethering tool, I was able to work easier and smoother with my camera while not being behind it (this is despite the limitations with Case Air already).

Case Air Tethering Tool

This idea required a mirror, and thus what better place to shoot in would that be other than the bathroom!? My bathroom, unfortunately again, didn't help a lot with this, so I had to move to another bathroom in the house and try my luck there. After changing in between lenses (mainly the Voigtländer 20mm and Canon EF 50mm), I've decided to settle down with the old nifty fifty, because the 20mm would be too wide and showing details I don't really like to add (meaning more cropping later on), plus the need for the wide aperture here to keep things out of focus properly (Voigtländer's 20mm widest is f/3.5 while Canon's 50mm widest is f/1.4).

Reflecting On Reality

Kenko's Big Stopper.

Initially, and at the back of my head, I've envisioned this shot in B&W and not in colors, as I think that monochromatic images show feelings in a drastic way more than colors do (and I'm speaking of human feelings, specially those related to the dark side of the personality). I wanted to really add the two sides (the real and the reflection) in framing the image but switching to 50mm and the lack of space made that impossible, and I could not use any other lens (Sigma 12-24mm was a choice but I have no filter to fit its 82mm diameter). The idea was to take two exposures; A normal one, and a long one and then combine them together in post-processing phase. For this reason, a ND filter was needed, thus I've used Kenko's big stopper (10 stops) for a bit of an "extreme" light stopping, and actually it didn't slow the shutter speed drastically (that is more than one minute so to say) - about 35 seconds were enough for a good exposure, but this is normal I guess since I was using f/1.4, and probably the lighting in the bathroom was quite efficient!
The rest of the job was then a work for Photoshop: Converting to B&W, adjusting the curves and tones and emphasizing the features with the help of dodge and burn. This is all what is it about actually when it comes to B&W; No colors to try to fix and remove casts, but still not an easy job when it comes to a pretty dramatic look, and tones must be delicately changed. In fact, I did have a problem when I merged the two photos and worked with layer masks to hide and add features in between the two; The traces of the layer mask's limits were apparent (i.e. the brush strokes made a turbulence of the exposure or a mismatch in the area surrounding them). To solve this problem I had to soften (blur) the layer mask until it was all ironed out.
Looking at it now, I do have some thoughts about the posture though (like, maybe, I should have done that with my arms extended on the mirror?), and maybe my hair should have been wet a bit? Anyway, no time to think about an image that is done already for the time being as more ideas are cooking and I'm still not doing much about them!

Finale

As you can see, here's only one photo I'm talking about its creation and I wanted to share some more but, as usual, my life has been erratic along with my sleeping pattern and body issues. Getting older I guess.
One of the things that is really getting me excited nowadays is discovering that it is possible to do some astrophotography without a tracker! A tracker is an addition (luxurious somewhat) to enable shooting the sky (specially deep sky objects) without causing star trails. The process a bit a complicated though (typically) and requires taking lot of images and shooting "light" and "dark" frames beside other shots and all that is fed to Deep Sky Stacker (which consumes a LOT of resources from my PC when working with). This is beside the ability to shoot in urban areas using the H-alpha filter to reduce or eliminate the light pollution. All that is good news, but I'm still having some issues here with this work and I'm trying to figure out the ins and outs of it; Needless to say, I'm still having a hard time to focus the lens into a blank sky already (I usually do test shots before doing the actual work of shooting to see how focus the lens is). Let's hope I have something new to write about in this blog (and in my Arabic blog) in the next few days!
On a side note, it seems I've kind of settled down to travel, maybe by September, I'm still not sure really. The thing is, many events are happening and my nerves are in need of "liquid nitrogen" literally to keep them cold and hard. Starting from family issues to moving my workplace further away from its current situation - lot of fuss, lot of paperwork, lot of questions, and lot of self doubt inside of me as whether I can cope with driving that distance everyday with my eyes condition. I already hate it as it is. The transfer or maybe the new location must be in use or active by September already; The time I usually have my vacations in. All I want right now is to be left alone, specially at work. Unfortunately, not many people understand this, or maybe they don't want to?