Retinol II

To be honest, I'm sort of lazy to type this blog post! I've been loaded with many things to do and little power to do them, specially with the start of the month of Rajab in the lunar (Islamic) calendar and typically every year, I would try to fast as much as I can of this month (and the next month as well, Sha'ban). This leaves me a bit powerless most of the day and napping along on and off. Anyway, I'm trying my best to re-schedule my time and organize some of it (if I can call it so) and trying to do bits here and there. As a starter, I'll start with my little announcement here:

Little Announcement

As I've promised before, I'll be uploading more images to the stocks on batches, and I've done so already with the first batch of 8 images (originally they were 10 but had to cancel one and keep one specifically for MostPhotos alone since it's a selfie).

Preview of the batch

The batch had been uploaded already to Canstockphoto (you can also visit my profile there by clicking on the signature at the end of this post) and on Dreamstime (only 3 were accepted!) as well as 123RF (all accepted but one still pending at the moment of typing this post). As for MostPhotos, I didn't upload this batch on there because I'm planning to keep my account there specifically for artistic selfies (or self-portrait) and large files of panoramas, specially with the fact that I've received an email recently from MostPhotos stating that they have changed some of their policies, and raised the bar for the minimum resolution accepted, from 6MP to 11MP!

This said, I won't be preparing another batch any time soon I guess since my dish is full already as it is, specially with the supposed preparation for contributing to Trierenberg's Circuit (or Austria's International Photo Contest). I was reluctant to participate, but I've decided to get into it. Sounds like gambling to me though specially that there is money involved (AND I didn't receive my gold medal for my panorama back in 2018 because of the bad postal services and protocol).

Retinol II

As I've stated in my previous post, I won't be posting all my work regarding Retinitis Pigmentosa Awareness Month altogether. Just to not keep all eggs in one basket. So, in this post I'd like to talk about the second image in the series that I've made so far, and it is a quite simple idea but I have to admit, I've struggled in the beginning with the camera. 

Sensing

The idea was simple and reflective on the process of going down the stairs. It is quite a struggle for people with Retinitis Pigmentosa, like me, specially when going outdoors in the sun or going indoors as well. The problem is in finding the edge of the step using the sense of color and shades of color (this is how most people perceive depth and distance when going down the stairs).
The hassle (somewhat) was setting up the camera vertically on the ground. Typically I would use the L-Bracket and it does the job perfectly, but this time it didn't, probably because the ground was not even. Thus, I had to fit something under the lens just to let it stand still. Exposure-wise, it wasn't a big deal as the shot was taken indoors and with most of the lights being off. The exposure of 4 seconds (at f/11) was just about enough to depict the foot motion as if it is trying to sense the step.

When posted on Instagram the shot gained some momentum (as well as on YouPic) and some people with RP did relate to it indeed. It was a "Mission Accomplished" moment for me. I guess I've proved to myself that complicated ideas are not necessarily the best. If I wanted to complicate this further I would have implemented some stroboscopic flash here. Saying this, I've been having this urge to work a bit with my messy speedlites but I'm not sure for what idea, specially with my busy schedule nowadays; A schedule that I'm still not grasping its horns.

Kika II

In my previous post I've talked about Kika's weekly challenge and the theme for Week 1 was "Childhood," and to be honest, I didn't like my simple shot then. Anyway, the week after, i.e. Week 2, bore the theme "Hidden;" As in, hidden face. 

Anxiety (II)

Once I've heard of the theme's name, that image that I've made back in 2019 jumped right into my mind; That is Anxiety.
Ironically, the shot was made in January 2019, as if it was reflecting on the anxiety that would ensue by the end of that year with the start of the pandemic.
The photo here, though, was re-retouched, for adjusting the aspect ratio (4X5) to be posted on Instagram and adding few dodge and burn, contrast, and few touches here and there and adding a soft dreamy effect. This photo had been uploaded to some photo contests before, so I figured that Kika's challenge is all about creativity and not authenticity or strict photographic rules and conditions, so I kind of had my time with such edits to my liking. But this was not the end of the story there, because I did take a similar shot just few days before that theme started already!

Three Quarters Blue

I did add the proper hashtag for Kika's challenge (#Kikasphotochallenge) to Three Quarters Blue but it didn't get that much attention I suppose because it was not new when the theme started. It was posted already few days before the theme officially started. Three Quarters Blue was shot with my Huawei Mate 9 phone while I was in the office in my workplace (yes, been there few times already to supervise the "cleaning" process). While I was waiting in my office, facing WhatsApp in my tablet for any new "orders" I've decided to kill the time a bit. I noticed that most of the protective gear come in blue color (intentional?). Anyway decided to do something similar to Anxiety and fill the image with blue, but since the phone camera can't focus up close and personal to my face, I had to take the shot and then crop it considerably in post-processing in a way to hide all other features. I've succumbed to the fact that I can't crop this keeping the aspect ratio of the original image and I had to do free cropping and that made the image come a bit elongated more than the usual 3x2 ratio (or whatever Huawei uses). The other hard part of the story was inducing vivid colors and brighten the eye. The eye would have been brightened in a suitable way if it was struck with a flash or sunlight, but with this quick selfie, it was all a burden for the post-processing. Processing JPEG files of 8-bit and in sRGB color space is not the ideal condition to create vivid colors as it is, thus one of the first steps to do was to assign ProPhoto color space to the image and work from there. The image was saved later in Adobe1998 when finalized. The eye here looks unnatural but I tried to make it so as much as I could, I just couldn't pin down the "normality" level here. All in all, I think it just contrasts the overwhelming blue in a good way.
On a side note, this photo was recently used by someone on Instagram as their profile image AND even sent me a DM to get to know me (probably it was a bot after all). Reported that, and Instagram removed the image (yay finally something good), and they put it back again and reported it again and Instagram removed it for a second time (yay another good thing). Waiting to see if this would happen for a third time.

Finale

Things are going slow on my side, and at some aspects, it kind of anxious as well. I'm trying to manage my time to the best I can in order to do the tasks that I've set myself to do, like uploading some photos for Trierenberg contest. I've uploaded a set of panoramas but I still need to add some more, and each image needs some inspection before uploading. This said, I need to see when to prepare the second batch of uploads to the stocks.
Work-wise, there had been some developments along the lane which made me awry and uncomfortable. There is seldom a moment when I wouldn't think of the upcoming events and how things would develop. There is a certainly some point along the line when I would have to leave this job but how, when, and what then? Such a pressure on my mind that leaves me paralyzed at times. Retinitis Pigmentosa is not giving me the best moments of life and I would have taken it differently, maybe, in my 20s or 30s; But at 40, that's a load on a back that already started to bend for the passage of time. I lay it all in the hands of God.

Retinol…

Busy busy busy! Been a while since I've posted here, and (hopefully) for a good reason. After putting on my last post some 2 or 3 weeks ago, which was a little advertising to my own work on Mostphotos, I've decided to go on and also do an Arabic post in my Arabic blog for the same purpose, and I've spent the past few weeks sharing and spreading the word. Fingers crossed!

That, however, is not all the matter. It is February already, and I guess I've mentioned already in some of my previous posts that I'll be getting ready to prepare some shots related to Retinitis Pigmentosa in this month, since it is the awareness month for this disease and I got into the habit of making related photos since 2016. What happened, though, is that I got into another weekly activity which somewhat ignited my imagination a bit and I really loved to participate, and that is #Kikasphotochallenge.

The #Kikasphotochallenge is a weekly photo challenge (to span over 12 weeks), with a theme proposed for every week. The theme is announced every Thursday on Kotuvakika's YouTube's channel. At the moment of typing these words, it is already week #3. At the time of posting it (Thursday), then we will be already into week #4, supposedly.

I've been trying on both ends, shooting for Retinitis Pigmentosa, and for #Kikasphotochallenge, and for that matter I've already participated in all 3 weeks with images (posted on Instagram of course). However, to keep things short and not to put all my eggs in one basket, I'll go slow and gradual by posting and talking about one image from each side of the stick; The RP project, and Kika's challenge!

Retina I

So, for starters, I'll talk first about the first image I've created for or about Retinitis Pigmentosa. First of all, I actually had to sit and pin down some ideas and also roam Pinterest a bit to gain some insights. One particular thing I've noticed about myself in this process is that I tend to gain more insight from quotes and text rather than from images.
I've pinned some ideas in my note and as I'm typing this right now, I have to say that I did filter some; I've canceled some or reformed some and changed the idea of some. Anyway, that's another story for another day. One of the posts that grabbed my attention on Pinterest is stating some facts about the glasses that we, people with Retinitis Pigmentosa wear and how or what they do (the fact is: Nothing. Glasses don't fix RP). And that was the topic of my first shot.

Visual Un-Aid

I have a confession to make here though. I was/am lazy to get my speedlite gear our (and still). Thus, I had to twist my brain around and try to find some interesting light to shoot in (and that mostly means that I would be shooting during daytime). So, my first shot here (or two shots as I'll explain) was done in, ahem, the bathroom. My bathroom's window casts interesting light in the morning and I admit, sometimes I just go there and switch of the lights just to gaze into that light (without taking any photos though). 

Anyway, as I've stated above, Visual Un-Aid is actually a composition of two shots (apparently). Using 50mm, I've tried my best not to move and to focus properly (using a cable remote of course) and shooting 2 frames, one with glasses and one without. There was a little shake between the two frames of course (tyyyypical) but Photoshop did some good job in aligning them. The rest is, of course, some game of masking to merge two and show the glasses on one side of the face. I won't go into the details of RAW editing; I really don't find any use in that. The trick, though, was to keep the shadows down but not without details still. The moral of the shot is that: With or without glasses, It's almost the same; It's dark. 

Kika I

Well, I've mentioned Kika and her challenges up above so I guess no need to list the whole thing all over again, but let's delve into the first challenge that Kika proposed for the first week: Childhood.
Again, my laziness here really got the best of me (concerning working with my speedlites), but also I really was not quite sure how to represent my childhood. Honestly, I was not that social and at this age I wouldn't be able to mimic the things I used to do with my siblings (like jumping off a cabinet and hitting my head against the chandelier, for example). Thus, I consider my trial quite mediocre, to say the least. 

Childhood Memories

Quercetti's Pallino
My most precious pastime
game during my childhood.

I looked and dug into my memorabilia (which other people in this house consider just pieces of junk) and I really wanted to use one specific toy for the shoot but I didn't find it (apparently lost to time), but I've found my Kinder Surprise toys box. Collected those around the ages of 9 to 10 (just a while before the invasion in 1990). I picked random toys here and I have to say, nothing was quite to my liking in terms of the composition.
For shooting, I've decided (naturally) to choose the sunlight for the task. I've shot bracketed and I did make a comparison between processing HDR and editing a single RAW file. Eventually, I've picked the HDR version but the two images were quite similar. However, HDR has more luster in the eyes and on the hair even though I almost wanted to discard it because of the luster on the skin which I didn't quite like. The perspective is weird a bit, I know. This is because I was actually lying on the ground in quite uncomfortable pose. Adding to my hurdles, the changing angle of the sun as it was rising made the sun beams change direction and strength as they were seeping through the balcony door. I had to work as fast as possible before it would have been blocked by the houses. Converting that image to B&W, though, did produce a remarkable "horrifying" image… which I liked.

Childhood Memories (B&W)

The B&W version though was not posted on Instagram; Only the colored version. Converting to B&W was also somewhat a lengthy process of blending and controlling highlights and shadows as much as possible and in various ways.
At this level I really wanted to stop and not think about doing any further work with this theme, as I was also working with my Retinitis Pigmentosa project. Other themes, though, were somewhat flexible with my creative juices, but that I will keep for other posts in the future.

Finale

In a time when I really thought I should just leave the thing called "Instagram" for a 3^rd time, suddenly things changed with Kika's challenge. Now, I don't know what will be happening after these 12-week challenge are over, but I kind of got into a small community within Instagram, away from the general… stupidity (sorry, couldn't find a better word) of Instagram; With all these posts that show on the exploring page having 1k+ likes and comments, I find myself digging into the lives of people that are closer to me in some way. They watch on YouTube what I watch, interested in what I think is interesting, and on the other hand we have people who suffer like I suffer with Retinitis Pigmentosa and share their exprience. My posts also, specially those about Retinitis Pigmentosa, do attract people and make them interact. To be honest, all I wanted is some Like after all. That was enough to show appreciation. This said, I don't know what or how would I be standing in relation to this platform (which I already despise greatly if not for few users). So it feels like a small bubble floating on the surface of a rampant sea, or rather a murky swamp.

I know what you might think at this point if you are reading this already. "this man is just a snob", but I'm really not. Instagram stopped me from giving Likes twice or thrice some years back because of all the Likes I used to give (thinking I'm just a bot), but honestly, I didn't find anything in return (specially from "friends" in real life that I worked on supporting them) and eventually that lead me to believe that it is just a waste of time. Compared to YouPic's community, Instagram is next to nothing. Saying this while I'm still using my free account there and not being a paying member (which limits me to post every 12 hours).
Another venue to rant about is the fact that hashtags on Instagram are literally useless except for searching for a specific tag; They have no role in spreading your post over the platform or getting it into the Explore page or even to give it a specific order on anyone's feed (if they are followers). This I've found out by experimenting. Unlike YouPic, Instagram does not have a regular or a systematic way of archiving or display new posts that one can explore, regardless of the number of followers the user has or anything else. For this reason, on YouPic, any user has a potential to attract new followers and viewers with every new post regardless of their content/feed and regardless of the (useless) hashtags within the post, and regardless of them being new comers or not. All are equal. This leaves Instagram being just a platform dedicated to businesses of all sorts (and often times users rank up via other methods outside of Instagram itself), and don't get me started with all the Story, IGTV (and the square format). Meanwhile, YouPic is indeed dedicated to photography and photographers WITH the capability of turning it into a business.

Note: I'm not advertising for YouPic nor was paid to do any review. This is purely my own sincere and honest point of view and comparison between the two platforms.

I do have some issues with YouPic myself, like the thing with the nudity content and the blocking mechanism, but nonetheless, the community (generally speaking) is more lenient and into the art of photography. So, if you are reading this and into photography and still roaming Instagram, try finding a place on YouPic and see.

I've talked before in my previous posts about preparing another batch of images to upload to the stocks as well as new panoramas to be offered exclusively on MostPhotos. The work is still ongoing with that but I'm lagging a bit because of all the projects (RP and Kika's) and the challenges that I'm taking the opportunity of to squeeze more juice out of my head. This is beside, ahem, playing some games. I've made a list already of all the files that I will try to upload to the stocks and I will do this on batches (probably 10 images each) and hopefully I will post about them here once they are up.

On the other hand, I've received an email from Trierenberg Circuit (or as we typically call it here: Austria's International Photocontest) inviting me to participate. I didn't participate in 2019 and seems that year the contest was canceled because of COVID (every year the contest start on September and ends on March the next year). Anyway, been thinking about it and I think I will be uploading some of my selfies done with the stroboscopic flash and some of these new panoramas that I've uploaded into MostPhotos already (well, they are not new but processed in a new method so to say). 

Despite not being on the go with my work but things seems to add up and I find myself forced to face the monitor for long hours indeed. Not complaining though. Things are busy this month and I'm hoping that would be a comforting agent to my ever-lasting mood swings…

Sigmoid (Re-Post)

Note

I'm back here now after a little vacation off work which I've tried to invest heavily into sleeping! However, for some reason which I'm not sure of, my last blog post was deleted after being posted already and it was saved back to my draft folder - and hence some of it was lost already. So, for the time being I'm just re-posting this blog post (minus the Finale part which was lost), in hope that I will be able to post a full article soon, hopefully by next week! 

Re-Post

To be honest, I don't feel like typing my blog for this week, but I didn't jot down anything here last week so I must do something, right?
The fact is, I've done much lately to be posting it here but I did one stroll at work with my "one camera one lens" challenge to myself, but the result was 2 images mainly (from a handful of images). Some of the images were taken were shaky as well so I've put them aside, for now. There is also one "experiment" that I've been working on for 3 weeks now and still didn't conclude yet!

Sigmoidal

Sigma 12-24mm f/4.5

As I proceed with my self-challenges, changing lenses with each challenge and heading to work with one camera, I've tried my typical 50mm (Canon) lens as well as 20mm (Voigtländer) lens. This time though is my first time to try a "range" lens instead of a prime lens, namely the Sigma 12-24mm.
I got this lens from a friend who changed to Nikon and gave it to me without selling it actually! I didn't use it much and the lens is cheap as I could tell (the price tag was on it as well!). However, I can see some future for this lens with its flexibility IN the range of wide angles. The only problem I have here, though, is the wide diameter of its front (there is a special adapter ring with thread for filters). It's 82mm wide, and I can't fit any filter in it so far. I might, for some reason, just try to fit infrared gel filter at its back, but this is for later. I can also dust off some of those gel ND filters or those big stoppers sheets (for solar observation and photography) and put them on the lens front and securing them with a rubber band, just in case I plan to do a long exposure job. However, this is for later for the time being, when need be. The design is apparently dedicated to landscape photography but that didn't stop me from shooting at close distances, specially that the near-focusing range is at around 20cm which makes for some useful distortion or enlargement for close-up shots.

The Warm Bloom

As I stated before already, I've taken many shots, some of them of the same subject as a plan to make some 3D anaglyphs later on but unfortunately that seldom did work and many of the shots were shaky to a minute degree that I didn't notice it first when I first reviewed the images. Anyway, there is a plenty of abstract shots I need to go through again and see if I can deduce something. One of the shots I've liked so much is one for a Fake Sunflower, I realized its name from searching online or maybe the formal name would be Heliopsis or Ox Eye. I've shot this bloom (which raise abundantly around my workplace) from various angles but probably the best was up close and person which resulted in The Warm Bloom. In this image, when processing, I tried to mix sharpness and softness altogether, beside cropping to eliminate distracting elements in the background (in fact I tried to fix that and make the background of homogeneous nature but I failed). At the end, i thought it might be a good image for some text or something so I cropped accordingly to keep some space on the side  for that purpose. The image was a cliché, I know, but still it was quickly accepted in stocks like Dreamstime and Canstockphoto (while 123RF is having more than a dozen of my images pending still for months!!!).

Below The Boss

After finishing from the outside around my workplace, I headed inside with not much intention to do much. In fact, it seems that my eyes got kind of bored with its surroundings in this place, and hence I didn't think of much. This makes me think of taking this lens again with me to work to give it a fair try next time and press more on my eyes to extract something. Anyway, when I went inside I got this urge, again, for a low angle shot with this lens. I've placed the lens (at 24mm) below my desk and switched the timer on to give me some time to sit down . After taking several shots, it seemed that the very first shot was the best of all! Didn't do much processing with this one (just a bit of cloning to remove texts or stickers and some dirt on the floor). This image was accepted as well in Canstockphoto and Dreamstime. As for the name, Below The Boss, I did not mean to sound an egocentric individual but it's just a title for this image, because typically, low angle shots for people do add some power to the character and it is used (with other concepts) widely in the world of portraiture photography.

The Banana Affair…

Breathing some air now and then with the schools being off, and yet trying to get my emotions ready for the stress and frustration with schools' return by next week. Temperatures here dropped down drastically and it was pretty cold, which I like! Unfortunately though, I didn't go out as I was hoping to take photos outside. I managed though to do my promise to myself and took the camera with me to work with Voigtländer 20mm lens and tried to snap some images. Well, I had to admit though that I did a bit of cheating here (if I can call it so) since I did take some accessories with me to help me out with the task. Anyway, this is not the main topic for this blog spot but let's see what I've managed to catch with this lens and camera combination!

20mm Fishing

As I've stated above, I did some cheating here (always in fact) when I did take the 20mm lens and camera with me to work. This cheat was to include, in the pack, some filters and the intervalometer. The filters were: Big stopper (10 stops) and a polarizer. Testing my eyes with this combination of camera and lens didn't happen in a single day in fact. I did take it with me wherever I went for 3 days. I couldn't touch the camera at work in the first day (got busy out of nowhere!), while in the second day, I was actually in a friend's workplace. Initially, I've wanted to shoot something but no one was there and I got bored alone and felt so tired so I needed that nap, until one friend came in and decided then to try something with him, as he was enjoying his breakfast on the desk!

An Taibhse Ag Obair
(the ghost at work)
Voigtländer 20mm, f/9, 10m, ISO100.

 Despite the dim light inside the office, yet the exposure time was not slow enough. Of course, if my desire was to show a motion blur in a suitable manner, I would have used that slow shutter speed and would have asked my friend to do some specific motion. However, this was not my aim. My aim was a complete abstract with a stable background (and for a bonus, a stable object as it appeared with the bowl of cereals!). To help lengthen the exposure time further, I've used (of course) my big stopper which ads 10 stops to the exposure time (and of course each stop is a double), so the total time happened to be 10 minutes. He was shocked at first, thinking how come he would remain stable on the chair for 10 minutes! Anyway, I've explained the idea for him and told him just to stay in the chair but he can move freely as he likes within the chair. I've placed the camera on a small tripod which I got years back (even before my travel to Ireland in 2010; I know because I used it there!) which was sturdy enough to carry the weight of the camera and lens, plus the lengthy intervalometer. It was cumbersome to straighten the image in-camera though, but it was good to some degree, yet I had to depend on the vertical line formed by the board on the wall (its edge) to straighten the image. The bulk of the work on the image was focused on turning the image into a dramatic and yet smooth black and white image; A combination of sharpening and smoothing the noise will always be the nightmare to achieve.

It's Changing
Voigtländer 20mm, f/13, 30s, ISO100.

The next day, in my workplace this time, I had another chance to try out the same camera and lens combination in addition to the same big stopper as well (with the polerizer as well but its effect was minimum). The cloudy weather was encouraging to some degree, even though to my experience, an overcast sky would not quite suitable to show clouds line in the sky with long exposures but I tried anyway and the result was It's Changing. I tried a longer exposure of 10 minutes but the image was so bright and the highlights could not be saved as I hoped. To make sure everything is in proper sharpness, and because the camera was to be placed on the ground near the pillar which did not allow me to see the LiveView or LCD, I depended here on the hyperfocus principle on setting the focusing ring and then I added one third of a stop (hence using f/13 instead of f/11) just to make sure that things are in good sharp level and enough depth of field. I placed the camera on the ground, on the box of the big stopper filter just to avoid scratches to the LCD, and that in fact allowed me also (when I did the 10 minutes exposure) to place a coin under the camera to see the reflection of the red light (which notes the camera is busy exposing the image); That way I was able to see for myself if the camera finished the exposure or not in case I don't hear the click sound when it finishes. Some might wonder why I don't just check the intervalometer, well, for some reasons I didn't want to move or touch the intervalometer: The camera was a bit shaky and easy to rotate on the box, so I kept the cable remote beside the camera, AND, it is better to check the light as I was having a walk in the garden instead of bending close to the camera to see the intervalometer. The red light from the camera's body is way clearer than trying to figure out the numbers on the LCD of the intervalometer. Anyway, I've picked the one with 30 seconds exposure here for processing and the rest of the game with this image, again, was to settle down with proper black and white tones. The highlights were a bit over but I was able to pull them down away from the cut-off region when processed. Strangely how this image was exposed for 30 seconds only at ISO100 with such a filter as the big stopper. I called this image It's Changing because it kind of gave me the chills in the spine for everything that is changing around me and in my life, from simple things such as likes and dislikes, to morals and priorities of people around me. It's changing.

The Two
Voigtländer 20mm, f/16, 1/3s, ISO100.

I wandered a bit around while exposing It's Changing and did notice some good approaches to minimalism and abstracts in some spots, but unfortunately, later on I've found out that many of these images were shaky because I was trying to bend or take them in some hard angle without any help from any tripod or mini-tripod, so I had to forget about them from the time being, unless I can figure our some creative way to edit my mistakes in some form of art! However, I was able to capture The Two here which is, to me at least of some sort, gives and shines some hope in me; About good things that happen in desperate times without me being in control of anything yet make me grow and flourish. I hope. Again, in The Two, I've used the principle of hyperfocus and with even greater f-stop (f/16 this time). I've taken several shots at various distances and angles around these 2 plants but probably the best one was the very first shot I've made (with some re-alignment and crop). Taking such pictures with bent back has never been an easy job, and I wouldn't be lying down in this dirt! I still didn't upload all these photos to the stocks yet. Didn't have the time to keyword them. As for the time being, I need to think about my next challenge and what lens I'm going to use. Should I go with a telephoto this time? Or change the camera and move to my converted 7D? We'll see…

The Banana Affair

The bulk of the previous two weeks, on the other hand, was focused on another experiment done at home, and not a mere challenge with a single lens and camera combination for one day. This, in fact, is a process that took me 10 days to finish! Well, with professionals I'm sure a period of 10 days of shooting is nothing really. The experiment? Rotting bananas. And just for fun, I've called the whole thing "Operation Banana."

 Footage from the 2^nd day.

So, before delving into the details, I just want to talk here a bit about the idea, which was simply to document the process of rotting for bananas, and since I didn't know what the exact outcome would be, I've decided to place a peeled one and unpeeled one, side by side. To get some good contrast with the white banana body, I've placed the set on a black paper (then acrylic board). The shooting took place under black lights (UV lights that is) and, of course, used my UV-pass filter (B+W 403) and DR-665 hot mirror to block any infrared, and after fixing the white balance, the result was a monochromatic image.

In the beginning, as you might have heard in the video if you watched it already, I've set the timer to take a picture every 2 minutes, but then I realized this was a bit of an exaggeration to get a smoother transition when frames are merged into a video. Thus, by the 5^th day, I've changed the interval of shooting to every 5 minutes instead. There was some degree of disappointment though, mainly because I didn't realize some biological (botanical) facts, such as that bananas do not turn brown because of some bacteria of fungi, but it turns brown or black in time because of some enzyme. Also, after the 5^th day, I've decided to warm the set up during the shoot, so I placed a hair dryer not far from the set (which actually made the whole room warm and cozy in one or two hours!). Finally, the end result was actually a shrinkage in size for the peeled banana while the unpeeled turned into a "fluid" form, but I didn't dare open it! They were 10 days full of running around checking batteries and memory cards (used 2 memory cards in the process, exchanging one when it's almost full with the other one), and the total shots taken here were more than 4000 shots (yes, four thousands).

 The Banana Affair

The hurdles were not limited to the physical realm with the set, but also in the digital realm with the preparing of the photos. Shots were all done in RAW. You might see the video here is a bit shaky and cumbersome with some movement? Well, blame my clumsy movement which caused me to shake the tripod in the process many times. Anyway, the video above is the total one and it was adjusted later on. Originally, the video was 2m14s long but I've shortened that later on by increasing the fps (frame per second) rate. 

To do such a massive and huge edit on these files (done in patches each time I would have to change the memory card) I had to dig out the old Digital Photo Professional (DPP), or namely the Canon's software which is installed along with the drivers long ago but I seldom use, if ever. Despite its controls, I managed to achieve the look on one image and generalize the "recipe" (i.e. the parameters of editing) on the whole set of images and then save all those edited as JPEGs with resize and changing the name of each file in sequential manner. All this process was to be so hard to be done in Photoshop - Maybe someone might say Adobe Bridge is the tool for this task? Not sure it would do so, besides, the controls and menus are some what complicated for me to dig out. DPP was much easier to work with and simple (and its simplicity sometimes is what makes not edit in it as well). Oh, and I could even change the color space to Adobe 1998 space along with the conversion to JPEG. 

This was the story of the Banana Affair, and guess what? It is now uploaded to the stocks and accepted exclusively on Dreamstime! It was hard at first because I don't know many aspects about uploading videos or footage to the stocks and they have special requirements, but I've done it after all with some trials, and now I'm up to do one more if I can! Let's see if it ends up well.

Finale

Well, as you can see I'm trying to keep myself busy with the camera as much as possible, but on the other hand I do have my moments of inspiration which I translate into some quote writing of some sort. I didn't write or think of words to pin a poem for some time now (since December if I recall) so probably my plan for the next coming weeks is to focus on this more, but more importantly, to focus on my feelings. 

Many things are troubling my mind; Life, work, future, as well as death in fact. I'm trying my best to stop my mind from triggering panic attacks and anxiety, and to keep thinking that it is all in the hands of God. This alone, is really leaving me tired to the extent of not taking care of what I'm supposed to take care of, or even indulge myself in. I think this exhaustion is even placing some love inside of me to hatred, to some aspects or some... people.

Some people do think that I do believe in horoscopes and the stars, but I'm really reading and checking those to ease things on myself and to feel the pat on my shoulder, not because I do believe in them (even though they are an interesting thing to study somehow because of my interests in occult in general). These things promise a happy and a promising new year; I'd like to keep that thought but I'm sure that the reality has another venture for me. Probably I'm due to a short vacation, not to travel, but just to stay home and sleep or do things and work with my camera without trying to manage the damn bedtime and the sleeping pattern…

An tSiúlóid…

As I'm typing this, there were some trials (and errors of course) on some little project which really consumed my time at home recently. Anyway, I'm still working on this and let's hope that I get something useful out of it! Frankly, I'm not sure what I'm doing or have done already, but we'll see. I'll explain things later when it is time to talk about this little idea in future posts, hopefully. Meanwhile, I'm actually living from one weekend to another and now waiting for the New Year's holiday here (which will be only one day). Not just to sleep more as much as I can, but to ease my mind a bit (specially about driving the damn car to and from work). Anyway, who's not sick of driving cars right now in this place with traffic jams taking up the roads for more than 12 hours a day?

Budgie

Since I was not doing much with my camera and as I was trying to kick myself a bit to move and do something, I've found some new target for me here: Our parakeet (a.k.a Budgie). We had this bird for a while and I truly hate to see birds in cages but, well, as usual, I don't have a say in this in this home of mine. I have to say though, he kind of have a weird character. I can feel it.

Nostralia

So, what I did, I just placed the cage on a table (as usual) and placed a speedlite beside it on another table and started to shoot a bit randomly; Why randomly? Well, it is an animal and I can't control its pulses, specially being inside a cage! Thus, my mind was set to do a lot of cropping work later on when examine the shots. To overcome the bars or the cage, I've used my 100mm macro lens (at f/8) in hope that the bars would not be too obvious; However, they helped me at some point as we will see! And for some reason, I've used my converted Canon EOS 7D here without any filters (no IR, nor Hot Mirror), and guess what? I was able to retain the original colors back with the adjustment of the white balance while processing the photos quite easily. Just as a remark: The main source of lighting here is the speedlite and not the ambient light, which means there is an abundant amount of infrared issued through, but without using any filtration system, I was good to go and I got the colors back (well, to be honest, I was hoping I would get something vivid or strange in terms of colors).

3D-Keet

Parastrakt

Taking many pictures on burst (successive) mode did help me as well to inspect the shots for some chances to make anaglyphs. They were not many in fact and apparently f/8 was not enough with this macro endeavor (the shallow depth changed as the bird moved and I was trying to follow him up!). Anyway, my main aim was to create abstracts actually and not anaglyphs, and this is why I was thinking of the crops from the very beginning of this random shooting, as you might have seen already up with Nostralia. I didn't name the pictures even prior to this post; I'm just putting the names now for easy reading and pointing!
Looking at some of these images, I've remembered some of the photos I've seen from some photographers here where they did use telephoto lenses with close objects like birds and horses and that really gives me an idea that I might try one day with my Sigma 70-300mm lens one day with this bird, as apparently this macro lens didn't block out much spaces, as can be seen in Parastrakt in the lower right corner (this image was flipped and rotated to be in that form by the way). The irony is, the first image I've shot in this series, was the latest to be processed and yet, probably so far, the most beloved to me! Behind Bars.

Behind Bars

Behind Bars was one of the first shots I've made in this series but for some reason, I didn't check it out till later after processing few images. I loved the lines formed by the ribs of the cage, with some of them being in focus and some blurred. Originally, I tried to work in color but then I realized that this image is more dramatic and more eye-catching in B&W and probably the emotions do show better in that way. I can see fear in his face (what about you?) probably because of what was happening around him with flash pulses striking his face. What I really like about this image, too, is the way that blurred lines of the ribs blend on the head of the bird like bands of inverse colors; This is definitely a trick I need to think of using in some of my future shots if possible. So far, there had been few images I need to check, and some I need to re-check in this series to see if there is any potential left in them.

The Stroll

With the "somewhat" lack of activities, and after watching some photography videos on Youtube, I got some passionate kindle going on inside of me to do some shooting outside (specially with the winter season right now). I do miss going out at night but anyway this is not the case here. I'm starting simple: A stroll around my workplace.
The thing was like a challenge and I used to do some challenges of that sort often and specifically around my workplace, where I would pick my camera with one lens only and go around my workplace trying to shoot something and come out with something unique. This time, though, I packed a camera with a lens (50mm), plus few items (2 mini-tripods which I didn't use anyway and intervalometer, beside a pinhole cap). As I started to work, an idea sparked inside of me to do some Anaglyph-dedicated shooting, which I did (despite the annoying flies!).

The strolling kit packed in a little camcorder bag.

In order to quicken my work a bit and also to get as much as possible out of the scene in order to be merged as an anaglyph later on, I put the camera on burst mode. It was partially cloudy day, but nevertheless, I could work in the range of 1/1000s of a second for the shutter's speed, and that made my work easier as all I had to do is just press the button and move gently to get a set of images with slightly different perspective. Working with 50mm lens here did not give me the choice to get closer (I didn't bring with me any extension tubes for macro jobs), and there were some instances where I wished I did bring those with me. However, the killing mistake was to use a very shallow depth of field (f/1.4, the lowest f-number for this lens). This aperture proved to be so sensitive to the movement that two successive shots can be so different in terms of the depth of field (and the location of the depth or the sharpness of the image). Anyway, I did escape with some useful images after all and some of them were good to be merged anyway!
 Some shots, I think, are better off to be in B&W as well because of the drastic and quite eye-attraction they cause away from their normal colored looks. I've discovered this by chance as I was trying to remove the color distraction from some images before converting them into anaglyphs. Sometimes, and for some images, the original colors can be quite an obstacle for a proper 3D Anaglyph viewing.

The Negative Bloom
Despite being like a negative or invert in colors, it is a direction conversion into B&W with a play in the tones.
One of my favorites.

But anyway, back to the main purpose of the stroll, which is regular shots, with some abstracts if possible. Escaping from the flies outside, I came back in into my office and started figuring out a way to use the pinhole cap this time (0.22mm) and shoot something towards the window. Actually, the idea for this shot was the reason I thought of bringing my camera to my work, because when the lights are switched off, the window becomes the main source of light; A majestic scene in winter time and the cold weather! Maybe because of the warmth that it provides? Seriously, I'm in this job for about 13 years now and I don't feel this, with such sun rays coming through the window, but only in winter alone. Well, it might have to do with the direction of the sun as well and how the rays enter the room, who knows?! In anyway, it was something to think of for a shoot!

My Dreams Window

The challenge, though, was how to I'm going to shoot this without a tripod? Even though the sun rays were strong enough to shorten the exposure, yet the exposure was in terms of seconds (ranged from 4 to 30 seconds depending on the angle). I almost gave up on that actually, but then I thought while use this relatively-long exposure to my advantage and create the abstract by moving the camera vertically in a line (as much as possible). Which I did, but then I did also add some motion blur when editing the photo later on. I wonder if such images are welcome in stock websites!

Doppel

Even though I was aiming to do a long exposure originally with this pinhole cap and through the window for the people who would usually walk outside, but the circumstances were unlike it. Not many people out there, and no tripod. Thus, I had to satisfy myself with this for now. However, I thought of one last exposure to make with the help of the whiteboard which is hanging in my office. So, I just stuck the camera by hand onto the whiteboard (pressing not too hard for stabilization) and took the exposure like that pointing to the same window, and hence we can see the reflection of the window in Doppel. To tell the truth, I was really thinking that I shot the two windows in my office for a moment! But then I remembered that the second window is covered in curtains still. Dementia at its best.
This was the end of the stroll and in fact up till this moment of typing this, I'm still checking and processing of these images. There is a plan to do it again and that time would be with my Voigtländer 20mm lens. This would be challenging somewhat because it is a wide angle and so many elements might be involved. The good part about this lens is that closest focusing distance is about 20cm which allows for some intimate moments with objects! This said, I'm already planning to upload some of these photos into my accounts on stocks websites and writing the info and keywording is surely a time-consuming task that must be done anyway, and pretty soon.

Finale

Well, because of the scrambled mind here I was not so fortunate to write down a new poem. I really wished to post one here to be my last poem for this year, but alas, my core couldn't stand it with imagination. I'm, though, mainly focusing on pinning down my thoughts about life and recording them for future reflections on my thoughts. It is all recorded in this open document, which I might produce another similar version of it for the year 2019 specifically.
I've been feeling some rage inside of me lately. It's not weird to be enraged, but this time it is a bit weird in a way I can't explain. I mean, a rage to the limit of despising the very thing about the human nature or let's say of those around me. Arrogance? I don't quite think so. Probably just tired. So tired. I'm missing the time when I would just sleep any time I want without worrying about anything. Anyway, let me hit this post button for now and go ahead and work with those images… in hope that I get something ready for the next post in 2 weeks. I leave you now with one of my favorite Muwashshahat by one of my favorite tenors, Sabah Fakhri...

Disappointment!

Disappointment... it is very disappointing. I just discovered that my abilities to sketch is not up to the task... at all.

I might have done some ornamentations or so, but sketching figured, specially in a away similar to those used in medieval manuscripts, is out of my skills. I asked my brother though to see if he can do something similar but he did not answer me at all on MSN!

As for the time being I'm continuing my work with the translation as I finished 2 verses and finished the transliteration for the 1st and the 2nd verses. OpenOffice might have created some problems for me with the foreign letters (foreign: not used in the English basic letters), I might have to switch back to Word, which is something I don't like at all. I might consider doing a manuscript-like effect without doing any sketches for persons. I will concentrate on translating and transliterating for the time being.

It's Thursday, and few minutes from now I will be out of this place and back home to have a nap and get out at night. I'm planning to start fasting starting from Friday, and with this hot weather it is really a challenge. Also, I might be able to go to Failaka island again this Friday (and hopefully I'll be fasting as well!!). So much pressure as it might seem... fasting and hot weather and also cruising out in this hot weather... well... fasting is about challenge in the first place.

If you ask why I'm gona start fasting, well, it is the month of Rajab now in the lunar calendar, and it is said fasting in this month has lot of rewards... not physical rewards that is! I did the same already for 2 months + Ramadhan (that is 3 months in total) in hot summer days last year, so hopefully I shall continue on the same path this year. Wish me luck!