The Walnut…

Here i am with another post, and I was going to take another break for a moment, then I realized that I should talk about the walnut high-speed experiment. I'm typing this just days before my birthday (and it will be posted after my birthday), so Happy Birthday to Me!
Anyway, this might be rather a short post actually, as I gathered the shots in a video which I will be posting below. Unfortunately, i didn't manage to take a shot of the settings, but maybe a drawing would do?

Before I heed, I'd like to announce that most of the images from this experiment are available already on my Canstockphoto. They were rejected mostly from other stocks I deal with (maybe accepting 1 or 2 only) but the majority (if not all) are available on Canstockphoto.

The Walnut

Well, first let me post the schematics or chart, or plan, whatever you like to call it, and sorry for the lousy drawing here; I'm not the best artist out there you know…

The working area: (1) Silver small car shade, (2) 430EXII with globe diffuser, (3) The working area, (4) A group of speedlites; 2x 580EXII and 1x 430EXII, (5) Camera with controlling 580EXII speedlite.

Impact's oval diffuser
which was fitted
on 430EXII

Worth noting that the shooting here was done with Canon EF 100mm f/2.8 USM Macro lens. Also, the car shade (1) was placed there in the beginning to reflect off the light coming from the speedlites at (4) but I realized it's not enough. The speedlites at (4) in the drawing are placed on the table but in reality they were beside the working table on stands. Anyway, since the reflection was weak, I've decided to place (2), a 430EXII speedlite with globe or oval diffuser on top, and I've made several test shots to gauge the power of the speedlite here; All work was done in HSS mode (or high-speed mode) of course.

Canon EF 100mm
f/2.8 USM Macro

The lens in use here was just about right for the perspective that I was aiming for. However, working with this lens in particular in LiveView mode is quite challenging for the change in the exposure in each test shot despite the fact that the powers of the speedlites were not changed. Finally, I've fitted a blocker on the eyepiece and it seemed to work fine but still some shots were off (probably this time related to the power of the flashes this time). Not sure why, but this problem doesn't happen often with other lenses when I work with them in LiveView; only this lens!

Initially, I started with f/16 for the aperture, but eventually raised it to f/22 (maximum for this lens). Strangely though, there was some apparent shallow depth (out of focus areas and sharp in-focus areas) in some shots despite this high f-number! It seems to me now that high-speed and macro are a No-No combination. All in all, there was of course a tweak in ISO and other things, and even the shutter speed was eventually raised to the maximum; 8000⁻¹s

Cokin's special
effect filter

Also, related to the lens in use, I've decided to place a special effect filter which I purchased from a friend (actually they belonged to his brother). These Cokin filters are apparently old and I don't have the needed adapter to fit them on the lens, but still I could hold them in front of the lens with the help of some paper clips. Before this time, I've never used these special effect filters in a shooting except for testing. You'll notice the flare in the image of the filter on the left here, and I made it that way intentionally to the show the texture of the surface, as they won't show in direct shot upfront. The filter added some touch to the images but not quite dramatic as I hoped actually.

 

The Sinking Walnut

Now coming to the actual experiment and work with the walnut shells. The main idea was to capture the impact of a water droplet on the water surface or just above the walnut shell. However, this proved to be challenging. First of all, I don't have the proper Gate gear to trigger the speedlites or the camera for that moment of impact, so I had to do all the work manually as usual, relying merely on my senses and coordination between eyes and fingers on the shutter release (using the cable remote here).
Another hurdle was the shells themselves, as I thought  they would sustain some water, and they did for some time, but eventually, started to sink, as it can be seen in The Sinking Walnut which was a test shot but I kept it just for that sparkle in the droplet (thanks to Cokin's filter here!). Apparently the walnut shells are porous naturally. Trying to keep some luster and reflection off water, I've exchanged the bowl of water with some can, put it upside down, and rely on the shallow edge to keep some water. I've also placed play clay (or whatever they call it) to stabilize the shells which proved a bit annoying in the editing phase later on, but it was a must.

Anyway, I will keep it short here and let the video do the talk. You can click the button to view it on a larger size. The whole process ended up with about 220 shots (mostly test shots of course and failed attempts) and sieved down to about 34 shots and finally, probably around 11 shots that were properly edited. Actually of the images is a composite of other shots that I deemed unusable; Not going to tell which!
I've realized during the work that I don't really have to shoot water (was using a head-less syringe for that), but at some point I've started to blow air from the syringe into the shell that had been filled with water just to make a turbulence and it worked just fine! So, a lesson to keep in mind when working in the future that the goal can be reached in more than one way, and some might sound a bit unconventional… I leave you with the video now.

In addition to these, I've created some extra pieces, just some artistic composition from one of the shots. Not sure why but I just felt like it really, but these pieces are not uploaded to the stocks like the rest. The two were saved as PNG to preserve the transparent background; So, even they are rendered as squares, but in reality they form a "X".

Vortex Pac-Man

Gluttonite

Finale

Now that I'm done with the walnut experiment post, I'm not sure what would my next post be about, but we'll see. For this reason I might even take a little vacation off from blogging until I do something significant with my camera, or maybe to put a little announcement here for some new photos uploaded to the stocks. Meanwhile, it seems that I'm already breaking with the resolution of making an Arabic post for my other blog once a month, as it is already August, and I literally don't have any idea what to post about there. About this same topic of this post? Maybe. Even though I wouldn't know how to render it up because that blog is dedicated mainly to beginners, so a lot of instructions and explanatory must be involved; Tedious, and might be overwhelming for a beginner. I've done such a post about high-speed photography before though, so this is another thing which makes me think what is the use of a new post about the same technique (almost).
Artistically speaking, I do a lot of editing for old photos but I'm not sure if i want to post them here since they don't have any specific category or theme, or belong to some project I'm working on. But I'll keep them on the side just in case…

Eagerness for traveling is back at me again even though I know that it is even harder than before with all the crazy world around me and me being the weight of Retinitis Pigmentosa. Those travels I used to do were the only reminder for me that I can survive and live alone, doing my own business, and above all, with some peace of mind. But that's something farfetched for the time being. I think no escape from facing these mood swings and coping with an environment that feels so strange to me as if I wasn't born and raised here.
Meanwhile, I've been thinking about placing some orders online, and among the things I wish to have is some soundproof panels or anything like that to give me some peace and quiet atmosphere in this house. But because of the bad postal services, I have to think it over, as ordering is not as easy as before when I used to order my camera gear all from stores in the US. Things had changed for me. For this reason, I'm planning to check if such panels are available locally here and again, I might need someone to pick me up to and from. Sounds pretty much like begging… and just to think that some people envied me for retiring early…

Inert...

Another week is passing here with a dormant activity on almost all levels of my life. I'm not sure what is it really, it is just that deep feeling of tiring mind and body. Despite my trial to do some photography but I failed with an honorary degree. Maybe I will talk about that later.
My niece is out of the hospital now. According to the doctors, it seems that she was inflicted with the herpes virus, and probably her teeth are suspected for such low immunity (adding the effects of thalassemia) to the virus and enabling the virus to the reach the circulatory system that easily and up to the brain. Thank God she is fine by now, even though with a dozen of medicines and antibiotics. Just to imagine such a little girl is suffering all of that at such an age makes me hate my life already.

Well, let's see what I've done in the past 2 weeks, if there is anything that I could have done better anyway...

Astro

After getting my Rokinon mirror lens, I didn't have much chances in the past weeks to try it well, but I did enough to see its effect on lunar and solar photography. The solar part, in particular, was a cumbersome experiment which I will talk about in a while.

100% Crop
Rokinon mirror lens (800mm) + 2 x2 teleconverters, f/32, 100^-1sec, ISO800.

The first real trial for the lens was directed to the moon. since I got the lens, the moon persisted on not showing up in the sky; if it is there then it's cloudy, or simply the setting time is prior to sunset itself. Anyway, let's not blabber about the "good" luck I've been experimenting this lately. I've finally captured the moon here and it's shaky as you can see above because of the great focal length (3200mm in total), and the wind was persisting that night. The crop above is a portion of the image which is not resized.

Sonne IX
Rokinon mirror lens (800mm) + 2 x2 teleconverters, f/32, 8000^-1sec, ISO100.

The next test was aimed, of course, towards the sun. In fact, the sun was the main inspiration to get such a lens after all! However, you might have noticed that the ISO was relatively high in the moon's shot and it is low in the sun's shot, naturally because of the light level difference between the two. Ironically though, the sun's shot, to me, was harder to achieve for a number of reasons:

• Sun's position in the sky which forced me almost to raise the camera at 90^o.
• Facing the sun and not being able to cover the camera with

LensCoat as I did with previous shots. The LensCoat is useful to cover my head as well while working with the camera's LCD, giving me shelter against the harsh sunlight. The diameter of the mirror lens and the fact that the camera was placed on Manfrotto telephoto lens support made it impossible to cover the system with LensCoat.

Cokin's adapter ring (105mm) is bent (!) and could loosely attach to the front of the mirror lens.

Focusing with the green welding glass proved cumbersome (it doesn't give a sharp focus after all) thus I had to try placing ND gel filters sheets in front of the lens (as Cokin's square ND filters are smaller than the diameter of the lens). This highly affected the quality of the light and increased the cumbersomeness of the movement of the camera and lens (specially with some wind blowing).

Despite the stack of ND gel filters, I still had to use the fastest shutter speed (8000^-1sec)  for my camera and still it would be somehow a bright image.

Source: B&H

I've used around 11-stop of ND filters in my sun shot. Surprisingly, the shot became desaturated. The blue color of Sonne IX might be typical for images processed from IR shots done before (by swapping channels) but in this instance all I had to do is increase the vibrance (and no channel swapping is involved). In the first instance the image was almost greyscale in appearance. I was thinking for some time about using the gel filters for general long exposure shots with other lenses instead of the Cokin square ND filters because staking Cokin's would yield a magenta tint to the image, and here with gel filters it did give an unexpected result. However, desaturation is way better than a magenta tint, from my perspective at least.
The cumbersome situation with the filters made me rethink about the so-called Rear Filters which are supposedly fitting for T-mount lenses like this mirror lens. On the other hand, there is some hope in developing some way to fit gel filters easily into such a system by placing the filters on the rear end of the teleconverters instead of the rear of the mirror lens. However, this needs some revision as the structure of the teleconverter's rear is tricky a bit. Also one of the things that I need to work with is to innovate some way to focus this lens without touching intimately to reduce the shape as much as possible. For the time being, I might be using some rubber bands and clips!

100% Crop of the sunspot.

Now back to Sonne IX which surprised me with the existence of two sunspots (each spot is composed in a pair of poles in fact, meaning they appear as 4 dots). On the smaller version, the focus sounded fine, but of course as we approach in to view the 100% or the real size of the image we can see that the focus is not sharp enough. That's good enough though. Previously, using my Sigma and two x2 teleconverters (yielding 1200mm), the sun would appear as one big disk in the frame. Now, however, using a mirror lens with the same teleconverters, a quarter of the sun fills the frame, giving a good zooming in for the sunspots at hand. The crop you see here is for the sunspot at 5 o'clock in Sonne IX above.

Nox

I've been trying hard in the past 2 weeks to push it further with my night photography. However, the exhaustion and the lack of interest in most of the locations available made me almost idle. Now, in the coming few days, I have to work as much as possible and as fast as possible because winter is vanishing, though slowly. After all, I've somehow succeeded in only one shot which took me some time around 45 minutes to do.

Ad Borea
Rokinon 8mm fisheye, f/8, ISO100.

The location is an old one in fact. I've previously took a shot in this location, with the same lens, and also in one winter night. The difference here is the shot was taken under the roof of the structure (gazebo?) rather than away from it. Also, Ad Borea is in fact a tone-mapped image from a HDR slide. The sequence of the shots was started at 16 minutes exposure and ending at 30 seconds, which one stop difference between successive shots.
One of the embarrassing moments is to discover, after returning back home and uploading the images to the PC, that there was some trash on the left side that the darkness made it hard to see back then. I had to spend some significant time trying to manipulate the image (after tone-mapping) just to remove the trash from the scene. At the end, the only plausible solution I had in mind is to copy the table from the right side and fit it on the left!
Now this location can be inspiring for some panorama work but I need to check my options first in that location.

Failure

I had some ideas sketched down on pieces of paper. Unfortunately for me, all of them do involve some portraiture work. Since I don't have a model, I have to try it all on myself. Of course, this is not an easy task, to be a model and a photographer for yourself in the same time (in fact it is never advised to be so). My room is in clutter; with all the gear splashing in the place. I've tried for several days to catch a decent portrait, but my trials were to no avail on both fronts; posing and lighting. Guess my face is simply not photogenic and doesn't encourage on more creativity with the light! I've decided for the time being to just abandon these ideas and keep on going with something else. Portraiture is a nightmare.

Finale

With the lack of books in the current time, I'm trying to spend time (specifically at work) reading off Wikipedia, which is not a good source of information but it would do the job for general knowledge I'd say.
On the group's front, we are now in the phase of sorting out images to enroll in Austria's international photography contest and I've been given the responsibilities of uploading the photos as in the last year. Not sure how much I will get involved with the group for the time being, but surely I have to be careful in this field. Otherwise, I would slip into a twirl of responsibilities loads beside caring for Mom and the house, and my own projects with my camera and other things (Geltani specifically). Sometimes, I do think that I don't need a vacation from home and work only, but even away from my own camera.

My work is passing through some upheaval in the current time; we don't really know what is going on with the administrative body of the college. Things seem to be in chaos, and more suffering for us, the scientific staff in this place. Day by day, I feel the screws are getting loose on my nerves and I might explode at any moment, with any one. My worries are even extending further on the home front, with some family members being into some hard times (other than my niece).

I have to say that I'm literally losing my faith in everyone around me. I firmly believe that no one out there would really help me with anything, however simple may it be; I have to take things on my own and with my own hands; always. "Don't I deserve some love?" had become a stabilized bell-ringing question in my head at all times.

Turbulent...

I'm not sure how to describe this week, but one thing for sure: I'm getting sicker and sicker from work. One of the graceful "gifts" from the "palace" of my work place is that they have given me some days when my fingerprint scanning (to check the attendance) is canceled. Thus, I kind of had the chance to get back home early without checking out, specially in the days when Mom has dialysis.Things will be back to the old rhythm starting from next Sunday anyway. This time even with further stress as college students would be back probably, hence the traffic jam will be optimum as usual. All that pushes me for a real vacation. And by real, I mean out of this place, away from those people.
On the other hand, some ideas for a panorama inside the car had to wait a bit because of the rains and the foggy days in the past 2 weeks, and yet I have to find a proper place to work. I've stated before in my previous post that the parking lot in my work place is a good spot, but because of the many headaches I've been involved in at work, I just became so sick of the idea.

Old is (not) Gold

As I was going through my archives one day I've figured that there was once a project, a small one, that I didn't yet complete back in 2011! This small project wasn't completely a photography project but more like a photo manipulation which, naturally, includes doing some photography of myself. The idea was to mimic or to express a feeling about Asperger's syndrome.

Asperger's

The final look wasn't what I exactly envisioned but since I totally lost the vision about this old project, I've decided to do some final touches and finish it. The image is supposed to show the tear of mind and soul, and how a person is stretched back in pain with every step advancing forward; this in my vision, how an Aspie (a person suffering Asperger's) would be feeling.
The merging of the two images (face and hand) isn't quite plausible. I had this idea back in a time when I had some doubts about my mental processes and my actions; as I thought I do indeed have Asperger's or something in that spectrum already. Anyway, even after assuring me that I can't have such a condition by some friends (in the know), I still kept on going and thinking about this shot. After working for some time with it I've suddenly left it as it is without completion and went on to do something else (ADHD now?). Anyway, it should have been worked out further than this but it's old and I think it is the time to just finish it without asking about the final result!
This though inspires me to do more self-projects in the near future, if possible.

Boiler

The boiler room on the top of the house has been a subject for some thoughts for some time. In fact, I was waiting for winter just to do some shooting inside. In summer the temperature in the vicinity would not be bearable. I, in fact, had the chance to work with this room at the time of doing my first sun shots 2 or 3 weeks ago, but never posted them here.

The Boiler Room

The panorama part was hard to be done. I had a dream of, by some means, keeping the VR-head hanging in the air somehow to do the panorama from the top of the machinery in the middle of the small room. Yet, looking at the situation, my wits weren't enough to find a solution for this, thus I've decided to go to the corner (directly in front of the door) and do a "small" panorama there for around 3/4 a circle, or ~270 degrees.
Looking at the final results, I've known that it's not something to upload, specially with the skewed bottom in the image. Even though I did take a lower portion (lower set of images at -45^o), but still more images and work was needed to keep things straight in such a small space. With such circumstances, I've realized that I won't be uploading this image to stock sites, and hence, I've decided to play around with tone-mapping to make it unreal a bit. I think the slightly opened door helped here to add some ghostly atmosphere to the scene. The organization of the objects in the scene still leaves a lot to be desired, but these are stable objects and I don't think I could do anything better than that, for the time being.

Boiler

Then after finishing the small panorama I still had the urge to give another try, this time though with my Rokinon 8mm fisheye lens. I've placed the camera on the gorilla pod (which I call spiderpod as well) in the same corner I stood in and with some help with the light meter, I've gone with bracketed shots from -2EV to 2EV. I've taken several shots, and every time the angle of the camera would be changed slightly and I think Boiler, above, was the best from all, in terms of the angle and the luminance.
Unfortunately, here too, the lines in the whole image aren't quite what I desired. I feel they are random. Probably, the only feature that captures my own eyes in this shot is the set of faucets on the right side. The gap between the faucets and boiler machinery somehow breaks the homogeneity or harmony. I think we are here, somehow, working with a concept that works against the typical minimalism. In other words, stacking features and lines to complicate the image, but with a condition of finding some harmony and balance between these lines and shapes, in such a way to form a continuum for the eyes to follow when viewing the scene. I've heard about the concept of maximalism (as an opposition to minimalism) but I'm not sure if I should define the concept that I've just stated as something that goes under the umbrella of maximalism. Probably, I will just call it Anti-Minimalism.

Getting Wet

As I've stated above, because of the rains and the foggy days in the passing 2 weeks, I had to delay the idea of a panorama inside my new car. However, some drops of rain on the body of the car inspired me for some abstractive shots.

Perlen der Natur
Canon EF 50mm + 20mm ET, f/22,
HDR, ISO400.

That day, I've placed my new Manfrotto macro rail on my monopod (which does sound like a crazy idea) and headed outside while it was raining. I was in a hurry that I've just forgot to cover the camera and the lens with my new LensCoat. Working with a monopod was indeed a hard job and it was barely stable but I had to because my car, back then, was parked in front of the house and surrounded by other cars, and working with a tripod here isn't feasible.
With a high f-number as f/22 and an extension tube, I had to raise the ISO just to shorten the time of the shots and get a proper bracket into HDR later. Many people commented on Perlen der Natur, saying that the lower right portion is distracting, and that's true indeed, but to crop this portion out, I would literally diminish the image down to the size that it can't be used as a stock or a print even, and would be barely suitable for online galleries!

Liquid Gold
Canon EF 50mm + 20mm ET, f/22,
HDR, ISO400.

After doing the major work with Perlen der Natur, which included not only a crop of some portions, but also a rotation of the frame itself, I've decided to test some work-out which is usually and typically used for infrared shots: swapping channels. The Reds and Blues channels that is. The rotation of the frame, from my own point of view, was essential. The original orientation of this image was 90^o clockwise of what you see here.
I think the main issue has to do with the inclination, or the diagonals, which are made by the water droplets and the light reflections on the body. I'm not quite sure what are my feelings toward the original orientation but it just felt not right and needs to be rotated. Probably, just a theory, the droplets of water on the body in this new orientation are directed upward while in the original is going downward (naturally!); and that is a symbolical expression for hope and challenge in my unconsciousness? In any case, originally such shot would benefit a lot from focus stacking specially with me now using the Manfrotto rail, but with a monopod, my chances were slim for a successful stack.

Durch Dunkelheit

Last week specifically, with some clear atmosphere and lesser chances for rains (but more rains might visit in the coming days from now). Thus, I've decided to head out at night as usual and look for a new location that I didn't work with before (or not much at least). In previous nights I've totally forgot about one location which was a place where I created one of the most puzzling panoramas that people in here talked about!

Planeta Columnae

In fact my visit to this location again, would be a source for another vision for this panorama specifically but I will head to that later in the coming days. However, this panorama was taken after dusk hours and people were roaming the place (and I'm sure many of them were looking at me as if I was a loco). This time, I'm heading there for complete darkness after midnight with as few people as possible.

Skylander
Rokinon 8mm fisheye, f/8, 40sec, ISO100.

One of the killing mistakes that I've committed there is to go out and forgetting my LED lights or any other light sources to see my way. Thus, I had to use my intuition bit and a bit of my memory (which can be worse than that of a goldfish!). Because of this, it was a shaky situation because I was standing with legs open above a water channel from the main fountain (you can see it in the panorama Planeta Columnae above). I've used my memory to set the f-number or aperture without looking at the numbers at f/8. Focusing though is another story and as a result, most of the shots taken that night had some soft focusing problem. Anyway, the problem is more apparent when viewed at 50-100% in the original file.
Despite the fact that I've taken several exposures in order to do a HDR merging later, Skylander, which took only 40 seconds, was chosen for some RAW editing instead of the other long exposures, which some took like 2 minutes. This is because the histogram of this particular shot was suitable and adequate for RAW editing more than the darker frames lesser than 40 seconds, and those very bright frames taking 1 minute and above. At the end, I did a channel swap again to show the tiny traces of trace in the sky more, as the blue is so dark and almost hid the features of the clouds as well as some trails. I think the surreal look at the end with a red sky is something, rewarding!

Das Licht Der Dunkelheit
Rokinon 8mm fisheye, f/8, HDR, ISO100.

Later, I headed to the outer walkway around the center of the place or monument. My aim in the beginning was to centralize the monument but the problem was a pillar standing in my way and covering much of the monument when I stand close by. Thus, I've decided to create a twisting line from the curved walkway roof. My thoughts were going in the field of "guiding line". I've taken several exposures, from 4 minutes down to 3 seconds even and merged the whole set into HDR. But processing this image to reflect the mystery in it was trickier than I thought!
I've made several versions of Das Licht Der Dunkelheit, either by tone-mapping the HDR slide or by editing a single RAW file. Editing the RAW file was promising in fact, with bright blue/magenta sky and yellow lights, but the problem is that this wasn't what I aimed for. It's not the soft feeling I wanted for this scene. Tone-mapping, however, proved to be even more baffling because of the many possibilities and many feelings that can be triggered by different settings when tone-mapping.
Generally speaking, I do have some regret for this angle specifically because I feel that the light sparkles (even after the slight crop from top and left) is somehow corrupting the view. I've settled my mind now on visiting this place again as soon as possible to adjust and check other angles if possible. I'm somehow satisfied with the final version here, with these directional shadows and lights, but something more could have been done, I believe.

Finale

Source: B&H

Source: B&H

Source: B&H

Source: B&H

Things are drawing near now. I can't have more patience to get more tool in order to enhance my astrophotography experience. I'm not sure when to put an order for Rokinon's 800mm mirror lens, but it is (along with other accessories in the list) are already in the cart and I might click the Check-Out button at any moment! Probably I would place such an order directly after receiving my salary payment in the 20s of this month. naturally, to order this lens I have to place an order for a T-Mount adapter (second image) in order to connect this lens to EOS systems. Then comes the Cokin 105mm adapter ring. This ring is specified for X-Pro series, (Canon lenses for EOS systems usually run under Z-Pro series) but anyway with my strong paper clips to hold the filters on the adapter I believe it won't be a problem. I've been checking the dimensions for the welding glass specifically and I think it will cover the whole opening of the mirror lens if it arrives here. This is quite essential to shoot at the sun. The only drawback here is the fact that I can't fit the IR filter in any way (not even with a step-down ring). To my experience, IR shots are more interesting than welding glass shots to some point. Finally, there is the Manfrotto 293 Telephoto Lens Support with Quick Release which will help me to give some support for the set of lenses either in astrophotography, or in macro shots, or extra macro shots (with lens coupling) instead of having the body of the camera attached to the tripod. The reviews for this device sound great!
Now with a simple calculations, what I'm expecting is a working focal length of 800x2x2, that is 3200mm! Meanwhile, most of the astro-shots for the moon and the sun are at 1200mm maximum. This is something around x2.6 more zoom power.

My future hopes and projects are what make me alive right now. The thought of leaving my current work place and just act as a freelancer is haunting me day and night. I don't know how to bear this and for how long. A vacation in this time is a must. A real necessity. Day by day, I'm getting so fed up with the disrespect in this useless work place.
Looking at the people around me I do sometimes thank God that I'm not married, specially under such conditions where everything is rocketing high up and no one is holding the greedy people back from chewing this country's people and economy. Makes me have dreams of what I would do, if I was a president of some country. The situation with my sister seems desperate somehow and I would wish to help her out somehow with her kids, but I guess my hands are cuffed in this matter. Needless to say, the more I live and grow, the more I despise the parliament and its people. I wish if I can set this place, and those people on fire.

As much as I try to ease out my life in any other way, seems everything I face is, simply, denying me this pleasure. A work place that I despise, and a home that I don't feel for. I'll wait then for some signal to see where to head next... this, with exhaustive thinking, is all I can do...

Waiting...

It feels more like running after something you can't catch and never will. This how my week was. Traffic jams, anger bursts, and completely thrown off by mood swings and not able to manage anything, well, almost everything.
I was hoping that my shipment would arrive by the middle of this week to have some time to test them, but unfortunately, thanks to the customs and procedures, still the shipment is not released up to this moment so far. The shipment had been in the country since last Saturday.

My shipment consists of 3 items: a) Rokinon 8mm lens, b) Lateral extension for tripods, and c) adapter ring from Cokin (62mm). And yes, the 8mm lens is a fisheye lens; another one!

A. Rokinon 8mm Fisheye lens:

Rokinon 8mm Fisheye lens
Source B&H

According to the specs, this lens is specially designed to give a 180 degrees in the diagonal with cropped (APS-C type) camera; like my Canon EOS 7D. It is in fact designed specifically for Canon. This lens hopefully will give me more pace and speed when I work with panoramas (for the larger angle) and frankly, I'm not sure it will work completely fine but if I didn't try, I won't find out. Just to think of all the re-calibration for the VR-head to fit the new lens makes me shiver a bit. I was lucky with my Canon 15mm fisheye lens because the default setting of the VR-head was almost enough to reduce any parallax. But with this, I don't know how it will go. One of the biggest concerns for me now is the chromatic aberrations in hard light conditions.
My teacher in fact provided me with a new info, and that is, panoramas are usually taken with a 50mm lens (or normal lens) because this lens provides an angle of view almost identical to human's eye. Thinking about it, and with the crop factor in APS-C cameras, that means I would be needing something like 31mm lens to do a panorama (which is something I have in fact with my Canon EF-S 18-55mm). An idea for a new experiment with my lenses, but in what place and how, I don't know. Fisheye lenses though provide me with wide view and it is suitable to include full bodies within complete slides without the need to take 2 shots or more to include one body, just like I did previously with my work place panorama.

I'm Busy

I'm just noticing that the image is tilted a bit! Anyway, such inclusion of bodies in images would be hardly done on 30mm range because it will be zoomed in, unless of course the body is far away from the camera.

B. Lateral Extension:

Photek Tri-X-2500
Source B&H

I got the idea to purchase this extension after a little experiment with some of my prints. After thinking for a while I thought this might be helpful for me as well in taking a shot for the nadir point, providing that I get it elevated to the same level as the camera during the shooting process. This, however, is still debatable in my mind, because I will have to carry more tools with me, with the already stuffed bags and shoulders I'm already having. it would be awesome though to fit this on my monopod (which I didn't use for a while) and keep it ready with me so that after finishing the panorama, the nadir point would be the last to take in a quick manner.

Prints
The shot that made me think of a lateral extension.

C. Adapter Ring (62mm):

Cokin 62mm Adapter Ring
Source B&H

This adapter ring will be fitting my Tamron 70-300mm telephoto macro lens. Not sure how often I will be using my ND filters with my Tamron but to make things complete, and since I do have adapters for the rest of the lenses (except of the fisheye of course), so I thought I better complete the set with this ring as well. With Tamron's minimum aperture of f/45 or f/39 and some ND filters, this might enables me to put a new limit for long exposures experience with me!


I. Troublesome:
One of the problems that I've remained several days trying to fix is an old panorama that I've decided to re-do in a different view point. It's my home's panorama under the dust...

Being A Grain of Sand

This time though, it is about changing to WV form. The main problem was to eliminate the remains of the tripod and the VR-head, as usual. But here, the ground is unique and ordered, and there was no chance for random cloning. After spending days and days just looking at the ground and thinking, I seriously gave up. I've just cloned in a random way. Not a beautiful view, but no other way for me to do such a delicate work.

Under The Dust

I named it, by mistake, as well Under The Sand. Personally speaking, I'm not so fond of it like the older panorama. I've used Photo Filter adjustment layers and layer masks to make a contrast between yellow parts and the blue parts (boosting both). Well, the blue part specifically was not there originally but it had a tiny blue reflection on the car shade from the outside and gave me the idea of making it as you can see here.

II. Scribbles:
Back to the old habits a bit. I was given, for some reason which I don't know, a pack of soft papers, somehow like glossy papers but not glossy really. It's a small pack to be used in the office like stick-it-note but without the sticky part!
This type of paper is good for scanning in high resolution because it does not contain obvious pores. In previous times when I used to sketch randomly on normal papers, these pores would cause me troubles in scans and I would have to use excessive Median filter to eliminate these artifacts.
Anyway, I'm back to my random thoughts for some time now, and I seriously don't know what I'm doing...

17880

In case you are wondering why it's called 17880, just concentrate and you will know; maybe. After scanning, the sketch was copied 3 times and stuck together to form the shape above. In other words, my sketch was only a quarter of this design. I guess you can think of it as some... African art maybe? Anyway, I got problems saving such designs in vector format. I need to learn more about these files. Every time I upload the file I get an error from websites.

Now, I have to admit I've been lazy working with my Ayvarith recordings again but I need to pardon myself for now. It was really one heck of a week. Time to sit and wait for this shipment to be out from clearance...

Moody Philosophy

Been a really messed up week. Busy and time flying by without control. Ramadhan is going to be next week (not sure which day I need to check the calendar). It is not a big deal for me as I'm used to fasting now, but because of the time shift in general, and because of the traffic jams that are just unreasonable, I would be getting tired more often.
Today's post will be somehow a long one, generally because I had some mood to do the experiments and things I wanted to do for some time now. Yet, I didn't include everything of what I did this week (like pictures I took from my work place!). Hope you find this useful anyway.


I. Beacho-sophy:
Been to the beach in early hours of Friday after a sleepless night, despite the tired body I got then. I really was not in the mood to drive but I didn't have anything better to do, so  I went there one hour after the sunrise time, and it was annoying indeed. You would think people have been spending their time overnight on that beach, and needless to say how the many annoying barbarians do act when they see someone with a camera. My main fear was, though, that some of families there might cause me a headache thinking I'm taking pictures of their kids. Very annoying.
The sun already rose above the horizon with some angle at that time. The light is not as warm as I wanted it like when it is at sunrise time, but it did make enough elongated shadows for my use. The problem with summer, and I believe it is something general and not only in this region, is that the sun doesn't give that warm yet not so harsh light quality in the morning or by sunset, and this is related to the relative inclination of the sun's path from one point of the horizon to the other. In winter, the qualities of light of the early morning or at sunset times are the best for more interesting play of light and an interesting play of colors (think of mixing the white cover of the snow with the coming warm light rays of the sun at sunrise or sunset making a balance between warm and cold into some interesting composition; alas, we don't get snows in this part of the world!).

I think I've went into some state that opposes the general trend of thought, or maybe this is what I think. I roamed the beach after breakfast in BK aimlessly in fact. The high tide didn't make any good spots for me. A low tide timing is the best to discover the rocks beneath, and those are the ones that do give an interesting look, like the old shot called Silent Observer.

Silent Observer

However, under the light of the book that I've finished lately, Harald Mante's Serial Photography, I kept my eyes open for different and ordinary objects that can make up a theme after all. In fact, thinking about it now I do have a lot of photos that can be grouped into some unique themes of themselves. After all, however, I rated the book for 3 starts out of 5 on Amazon. I think it needs more order and organized writing, but nevertheless, it is a source of inspiration!


Having this book in my mind, you would see things in a different way somehow, or in fact you might just begin hunting for pictures of things that people usually don't care about: mob, rocks, chairs, doors, rags... etc. This is exactly what I noticed myself when I came across some large stones and rocks that lay on the beach, but I have to say that HDR helped me here to emphasize the idea that I wanted to deliver. The image was edited first in HDR mode in Photoshop just to change the saturation and add some adjustment layers to fix the exposure and other color casts. Gave it a try with the manual tone-mapping, but, as usual, I've failed with an honorary degree! Anyway, I realized that a sharper look can be achieved when tone-mapping this adjusted HDR in Photomatix after all.

Rock and Rocks

Despite the fact that this image is already rejected from some stock sites, but I'm satisfied about it because I have an idea behind it. It is maybe a matter of Philosophy, or simply Psychology. If you are sure of something and expressed something in a way you are satisfied with, it wouldn't matter, maybe, if others refuse it after all. Of course this can't be general, as we have matters in life that enroll under "etiquette"! 

My idea is uniqueness and being separate from the rest. Being with others and being alone in the same time. In fact, I did take images from Ireland and from here that can be put under such theme. I'm thinking seriously of making a "tableau" or a large image that contains smaller images or thumbnails of images that go under the theme of Uniqueness, Alone, or Different. Good thing though I didn't dip myself so much into the water while taking this shot, as my feet were going down into the mud and the sea water was tickling my feet as well!

But if the previous image was done in a thoughtful way, this was not in fact the whole story. There are times when the concept comes later after the visual aspect. I like to call it a Reverse Philosophy, as it is simply a reflection on what did you take a picture of, and trying to find a philosophical meaning for it AFTER taking the picture and not while or before taking the picture itself. I think it is simply put: being the photographer and the viewer in the same time.

This happened as I was walking on the beach and found out a grating of some sort that I just don't know what it is used for, and apparently it was a really old piece because of the corrosion. The idea in the beginning was purely systematic and abstractive. I planted the grating in the sand to try to make a shadow the curves with the sand ripples. I thought it is a good thing to have an image where straight lines, make curved shadows at the same time...

Grated Shadow

Tried hard to make some interesting geometry or illusion by moving around and pointing in several directions toward the grate, but I guess this one was the best. It seems that I'm in the process of making my own style in shots, where I tend, automatically, to play with the visual lines of the object and swallow up the object to make it simpler or illusional. My spell-checker doesn't approve "illusional" so I'm going to say: tricky!

Another shot was made from the back in portrait to give some depth to the essence of the image. The sea water was included in the scene but was cropped out later, leaving the grate and the sand.

Beach Remains

The picture above followed the rule of thirds originally until it was cropped. Both of the images of the grate were actually processed from RAW files, but when I shot them, I did take bracketed sequence to prepare the scene for HDR processing. However, I deemed that unnecessary to do as I liked the colors and the exposure in one of the slides for each scene, and started from there trying to adjust more of the colors. It is dramatic enough as it is. I didn't clean the above shots from the litter dropped on the beach intentionally, as I wanted to add some "motion", specially in Beach Remains, to simply show for real, Beach Remains! It is the message of what we do to nature. Everything on this planet is beautiful, until we arrive in it. However, Grated Shadow specifically was a point to stop in my thinking. The meaning that I give to this image was simply added AFTER the shot and the processing and on location I really didn't have such thoughts at all. I can see it now as a show of how straight people in the apparent, do have crooked personalities at the back. Are we what we say we are? Are we straight (in manners) indeed, or it's just a bubble we are living? When the sun shines over, our shadows will become clearer to the observer, but in the same time, we might be indeed straight and good, yet the background makes us look evil. In the second picture you can see that the bent grate is actually forming a full circle despite the bend in its structure from the top. Go on and think about it. How would you interpret that with yourself?

Walked off from that location to hear a rumble on the road in front of the beach, to see that an accident just happened before my eyes! Two buses crushing each other's sides. Anyway, while everyone was looking, I prepared my tripod to shoot one last image. The shed. It is a common target for my camera on the beach but this time my thought was aiming at making a play out of it. An illusion that I was not aware of before. You can visually make the shed stand on 3 legs instead of its regular 4 legs!

Geometrical Play IV

This one too was processed from a single RAW even though I did take bracketed sequence, and guess what, I didn't notice the clouds in the horizon behind the shed. Things were like washed out in the location but the details started to show up when being processed. With adding some adjustment layers to fix colors and luminance, some banding in the sky appeared and I had to use some blurring techniques to render it smoothly with other areas of the sky.
I did try making a 3D image out of this scene but seems that I swung my tripod head so much, thus making the final 3D image containing a strong visual ghosting effect. However, my aim was to change my procedure somehow when I work on creating 3D images out of HDR slides. It is another story to tell, maybe on another day...

You might be reading the title Geometrical Play IV and wonder where was III? The fact is I didn't put Geometrical Play III in any posts on this blog. But just to make a good sequence (a new series?) I might as well list them here accordingly...

Geometrical Play I

Geometrical Play II

Geometrical Play III

As you can see, Geometrical Play III is only a merge between I and II. I had to overlap the two and manually blending the middle area to make it look like one pillar after all.

II. What Stop Are You?:

There was an experiment that I wanted to do some really long time ago, but since most of my work and inspiration comes essentially from a spark of a mood, I didn't really feel like doing it until this week arrived. This experiment is just to know how many stops does the welding glass (got it from ACE few months back) put down. The settings was not easy to work with and in fact I started in a wrong way in the beginning, because I was using a halogen light source.

I was thinking of a halogen source in the beginning because I thought having a strong light is essential, since I'm going to use a glass that is almost opaque. Yet, my measurements using the camera metering did not work quite well because of the hard light and the shutter speed went far beyond the speed of 8000 (max shutter speed for Canon EOS 7D), and that was with the highest f-number (smallest aperture) that my Tamron lens could give (f45).

I had to re-configure the set and use a less intense light source, so I chose a regular tungsten lamp of 60W. The camera was set on Av (Aperture priority) mode so that I would change the f-number and the shutter speed would be shown up by metering. The ISO was fixed at 1600, and this high value is just to make the sensor more sensitive after putting the glass in front of the lens, and of course this value must be constant before and after putting the glass.

The set after re-configuration

Of course the experiment was carried out in a dark room (almost dark as the time was day), and I used my Tamron here mainly for two reasons: A) it has a macro mode so I can fill the lamp within the viewfinder completely and put the filament of the tungsten lamp in the center (for spot metering), and B) this lens has the highest f-number among my other lenses (can reach f/49, but in the experiment that maximum was f/45). After obtaining the results and putting them into spreadsheets, I managed to get the Stops from the simple equation that I usually use to measure the time required to take long exposure shots: T = S * 2^x, where T is the time after applying the Stops, and S is the shutter speed at metering, and x is the number of Stops. Simple algebra turns the equation for number of Stops as: x = [log(T) - log(S)] / log2.

Results of the experiment

The time here (or shutter speed) is in seconds of course. F-numbers below f/14 were neglected because the shutter speed required was faster than 8000 (that is 1/8000) and such measurements can't be considered for comparison. The maximum shutter speed for Canon EOS 7D is 8000. The average Stop number from all these values yields: 11.6635808068826; Of course I'm not going to include this number in my future calculations!! Thus, I can say the Stop of this welding glass is 11.7 as an approximation.

Another problem arise with using this glass, which is the tint. Welding glasses are usually tinted with some color, but fixing the WB might fix the problem as I did in this little experiment with the halogen lamp before. I'm not sure though how it would when it comes to a real scene with various colors around...

Halogen lamp with tint from glass

Fixing the tint with WB in RAW editor (added a bit of yellowish hue myself)

Now with such experiment, I might be able to use various materials and not necessarily glass to make up for filters! However, I'm stuck now trying to cut the glass piece to the size of Cokin Z-Pro filters so I would be able to fit it in the adapter as a regular filter. I'm lucky too that the thickness of the glass is acceptable and fits in the adapter, so all what I need is to cut it. So far, I couldn't find a shop to cut this piece and one shop told me already that I need a special type of shops that make glasses for cars' windshields and the like because this glass (the welding glass) is a special variety and might not be cut properly with regular methods! I might end up having to make up the holder myself in some DIY-way! Even with that though, I'm waiting for the release of new quantities of ND100 filters from Cokin which put down 6.6 stops. I read on some websites that the product was called for from the manufacturer for some reason. However, I'm waiting for notifications to my email from B&H whenever this product is available.

Finishing off this camera-trend with long-awaited writing capabilities. I've been busy with work lately. I have to do an experiment with some apparatus and take some readings, and I prefer to do it by early hours of morning so I would be able to do other things the rest of the day (at work). I really need to work on hard brainstorming on both fields: photography, and writing. Not an easy task at all.
I'm spending my time reading the last of the three books, which talks about the basic of the digital camera and photography, even though it would feel like I'm coming late to the class, but I'm learning new things still even if I know how to use my camera. Well, I can use the basic functions in the camera but still there are lot of things that I need to work and sort out and read about.
However, I've been trying hard to put some lines that were roaming around in my mind into some verses, and I had to sacrifice my time at work that I would specify for reading this book, to write what I wanted to write. I think I suck at time-planning, as usual. I need to sacrifice more for my Ayvarith projects and the sound-recording that I'm still not able to do. Anyway, my new written piece (call it a poem or a lyrics, as you like) is called Of You, All I Need, and maybe I should say, it is a dedication...

Of You, All I Need

Thinking of you till it hurts,
six thousand miles to fray.
Mimicking actions of love,
passionate dreams as they may.
Wondering about,
Searching around,
All what I envisioned seems untrue.

Seven seas or lands,
staggering winds won't stand,
for a peek into these eyes.
A signal is all I wait,
a heck of improbable fate,
watchin' it goes on by, by my eyes.

Through the distance,
I've burned my fire,
in hope of a glancing heart.
Through the silence,
I sought the patience,
when my world was fallin' apart.
Just a glance, though,
just a glance, now,
of you, all I need...

In the matter of the fact,
whether dead or alive I stay.
My mind is a conquered,
and my soul went astray.
Wondering about,
Searching around,
for something without a clue.

A flame of desire,
driving me to the higher,
to something ever untouchable.
If only this hand,
expands to stand,
some of this worried collectable.
I'm into pieces...

Through the distance,
I've burned my fire,
in hope of a glancing heart.
Through the silence,
I sought the patience,
when my world was fallin' apart.
Just a glance, though,
just a glance, now,
of you, all I need...

O my saviour in the gloom of troubles,
my smiler when my frowning doubles,
how did you leave me,
at a broken heart?