Zu Teilen...

A week marked with laziness and blown mind because of the heat. I'm seriously having issues regarding my workplace; I started to reduce my "respect" to it, as if there is any already anyway. I'm skipping some days to do what I consider a more important job for me, regarding this blog, photography, and do some studies regarding my conlangs and phonology. Not sure how long this status would last, but in such summer and heat, and such disrespect for the admins who barely know what is science, which for, I spent 6 years of my life in this college - it is hard to tell if I can regain any respect back.
In the meantime, I'm on the path of doing some new set of experiments with my camera but yet I'm not ready to put on the pictures here; till the moment of typing this there are no shots yet! But hopefully something would be ready for the next week. However, I did a little tutorial for tone splitting which you can read below under Split It!, if you like this technique!

Crescent Beach

It was back in April when I worked with this panorama on the beach at night, in a place that I commonly call The Secret Spot. This panorama, which was majorly done by continuous long exposures ranging from 2 to 4 minutes, and took around 2 hours to be done - it was done in several formats and projections. Except of one which I suddenly remembered!

Mare Lunare

The forgotten projection was the Globe or Circular projection of the same panorama. I seldom use this projection to show panoramas because of the limited view, and hence, the limited creativity aspect that can be controlled with such projection. The projection is circular mainly and the background is transparent (if saved in a file format that supports it). Because of this circular shape, some features might look cut instead of being highly distorted. However, I decided to take a chance at it, specially that this is one of the last panoramas done before the advent of summer. Sorry, I mean hell.

Crescent Beach

Once achieved, it was really hard to pick up a suitable angle. Moreover, it was apparent that a crescent shape would form but there was a dilemma should it be made out by the sand or the sky. After changing the aspect (in terms of rotations) I've finally decided that I should make it with the sand portion of the panorama. In editing the panorama later, I've worked with many layers to remove color casts, increase contrast, and most importantly, brighten the sand portion of the image and suppress the luster of the sky just a bit to pronounce the crescent more. The formation of the crescent though wasn't quite good enough because of the connection between its ends on the far right. I think I've made a mistake in making the sand crescent here look directly to the right (i.e. in a right angle). Probably something twisted and tilted a bit would give more dynamic view and interaction with the eyes. Anyway, it is an experience, and hopefully the impression and knowledge shall be memorized for future work!

Split It!

As you may now know (if you are a follower), I've been working on converting some images to B&W and also using Tone Splitting specifically. Tone splitting provides a new taste and flavor to the B&W; Maybe I can call it the next level of tinting a B&W image.
For those who know nothing about it already, Split Tones, or Tone Splitting, is a technique to divide the highlights and the shadows to two different colors. Even though the technique, theoretically, can be applied to any images, but it is more apparent and more resilient in the arena of B&W images rather than colored ones.
Usually this is done in RAW editing phase, but sometimes we do need to edit a JPG file, thus I had to work out some way to split the tones "manually" if so to say. This method might not be as accurate as editing directly in RAW, but it accomplishes the look somewhat. I'll describe it below.

I. Open the image file (in Photoshop of course). Here, I will presume it is a colored image already. I'll be dealing with one of my old images: Harmonie.

Harmonie

II. You can duplicate the background layer to feel safe (Ctrl+J) or you can work directly on this layer. The choice is yours. However, we add then a Black and White adjustment layer by clicking button (1) and picking (2) from the menu. The tones are then adjusted to taste (3), but pay attention to the details and how the highlights and shadows are connected!

Click to Enlarge

III. Then we add a Threshold layer to split the highlights and shadows of the image. Click the button again (4), and pick (5) for the list, and adjust the tones to taste (6). Again, pay attention to the highlights and shadows here. I suppose there should be a balance between the two at this stage but it is after all a matter of taste.

Click to Enlarge

 

 IV. As the layer Threshold 1 is highlighted, press Ctrl+Alt+Shift+E (altogether!). This will merge all the layers in a new layer on the top (7), then turn off Threshold 1 (8) by clicking the eye icon beside it.

Click to Enlarge

V. While the new layer is still highlighted (i.e. selected), Press Ctrl+A (Select All), then Ctrl+C (Copy), and then Ctrl+D (Remove Selection). Now, the new merged layer should be stored in the memory (to paste it in the next step).

VI. We, again, add and adjustment layer (9), and this time we pick the Photo Filter adjustment layer (10). After the layer is placed on top as usual, turn off the previous layer (11). While holding Alt, click on the layer mask of the Photo Filter layer (12) and the page turns white. Press Ctrl+V to paste the image we copied earlier in step 5. After pasting make sure you press Ctrl+D to remove the selection. Now pick a color in any way you wish and tone it as you like (13) - this should be controlling the highlights. It might be a good idea to keep Preserve Luminosity option checked.

Click to Enlarge

VII. After finishing setting the color and its level in the previous step, directly duplicate this layer by pressing Ctrl+J (14), and then directly press Ctrl+I (15) to reverse the colors of the layer mask. This is, now, the shadows controller. Now set a new color and its tone (16). If the dialog didn't appear, just double click the icon of the layer (i.e. the one beside the eye icon).

Click to Enlarge

At this point, the main process is over. The rest is experimenting with the colors chosen for highlights and shadows, and their strengths. Some extra stuff can be done are:
1. Adding Vibrance adjustment layer to increase the vibrancy of the colors.
2. Adding Contrast adjustment layer to increase (or decrease contrast).
3. Do a slight Gaussian Blur to the layer masks of the Photo Filter adjustment layers; and the amount is dependent on the image size of course. This is to soften the edges where the two tones of highlights and shadows make a contact. The blur is better be of the same magnitude for both layer masks.

Just another halfie.
Tones split between blue
(highlights) and
yellow (shadows).
The balance here is shifted
to the shadows more, making
the blue tint of the image in the
highlights not directly visible.

These are just some suggestions. Generally, I've been using the concept of "complimentary colors" in doing split toning jobs to my images; that is use one color for highlight and use its complimentary color for the shadows (e.g. yellow-blue). However, this is, of course, not a rule. But a good and logical way to start. It would be useful to know (and memorize) the circle of colors!
All in all, even with split tones, it might look like a work of tinting a B&W image sometimes, specially when the weight of tinting shifts to one side (i.e. to highlights more than shadows or vice versa) in an obvious way. For example, Just another halfie on the left was split-toned (in RAW format) between Blue/Yellow^*. Yet, to achieve the look that I really liked, the balance was shifted towards shadows more than highlights making the image look generally yellow, but with a slight tint of blue on the skin which can be hard to notice for some eyes; this is noticeable only when the blue is removed and the skin becomes "white" - only then, the difference to the eyes would be clear. When I did this experiment, it was obvious how important is to add a highlight tint (specially a tint from the complimentary color) even if it was hard to notice easily by the eyes. Even a slight amount of complimentary color into the image, whether in shadows or highlights, can produce a pleasant contrast that gives some more strength to the image. I had the advantage here to suppress the green background by toning the Green tones down; I think I was lucky for not wearing green that day!
Beside using complimentary colors in split toning, sometimes I do get the idea of the major colors in the image itself; this is if it was majorly ruled by two major colors.

Orbis Fidei
Original Panorama.
Majorly dominatedby yellow and blue.

Orbis Fidei
After splitting tones using Yellows for highlights,
and blues (cyan) for shadows.

Here comes another reason why manual tone splitting can be useful. Panoramas are not RAW files to be edited in RAW and their tones can't be split there. Thus, manual work is due (whether with high resolution TIFFs or regular JPGs). I'm still digging in the past panoramas to find those which are suitable for such technique.

*It is a convention, to myself, when mentioning colors of tone splitting, to mention the color of the highlights first, then of the shadows.

Finale

Time is ticking, and I've finally finished the bulk of the work with the Irish Visa. What is left now is the other half of the bulk! That is a proper photo for the application, and a 6-month record from my bank (to prove I can support myself there). I'm planning on leaving around the end of September. Though 3 months are ahead, but I have to hurry up with these tasks and send my documents (I think to the embassy in Abu Dhabi now) because such procedures might take 8 weeks as they stated; i.e. 2 months!

I have recently received a surprising phone call from an interior designer which quite swept me through in surprise - could this really be a start of a business trend? I'm not quite sure what is the next step, as the other side asked to arrange a meeting, which would probably fall within Ramadhan. The mention of panoramas, as he stated, gave him more ideas than he was thinking of. Anyway, I've left organizing a meeting for him to schedule and I just have to sit and wait I guess. If this could happen for real, I might have some sort of condolences regarding the despicable workplace I'm dipped in.
As for now, I'll just sit and watch my life, and work with my camera as much as possible. My dreams, myself, and I... with my camera... is all what is left for me here...

Cuvaitum At Work...

My mood has been off lately. Trying to smile and laugh just to cover up for the bleed. Ah well, who cares anyway. At least I had the chance to play with my camera and catch a panorama in day time, away from the cops and security people. An experiment that I might be willing to do again, some time...
Previous weekend was specially weird. I did sleep so early. So early that I won't be sleeping like that for work itself! And wake up early too. I didn't want to miss the chance here so I went on to have breakfast on the beach and look for something to capture. I took my tools including my Manfrotto 303SPH VR-Head (was it a coincidence?) and drove along the beach. It was around 7 a.m. or a bit before that when I settled behind Kuwait Towers and started to do my job in a hurry fearing the usual. One panorama was enough to keep me busy for a while now. There are lot of things to do with one panorama, as different viewing angles do make a difference now and I won't let go, from now on, of a panorama until I exhaust my options with it. However, I didn't miss the chance to take some single clicks here and there. It's nice to add some icing to the cake isn't it?
Just before going on, I would like to talk about my previous "homework" in my photography class.

I. Homework #1:

It was our first homework in the Photography Class L1. The main point was to criticize the images in general. Along the years that I've been working with my camera and specially in the field of HDR techniques, I've faced many useless comments and criticism that just don't consider what I'm trying to say in the image. Anyway, I think my mind now has developed a sense of what is a "real" criticism and what is "trash". For this reason, I tried my best to do the shots in JPG only without RAW and without any adjustments at all. Since my teacher is the one who will criticize me, then I have no problem at all and I would learn here, instead of putting up with depressive non-sensical comments. Anyway, our homework was to take 4 shots, and I did take several shots for same scene and then picked the best as I think for this homework. Some people brought 5, 6 and even 10 shots. I wonder if they have problem with mathematics!?

Nail in a Wall

My first shot, nail in a wall. I don't know what happened to this nail, anyway I was surprised for its shape. The fact is I had only 2 hours probably to take the shots before my class starts, thus my mind went on thinking so fast about a solution. The idea was to have a long shadow of the nail but unfortunately, the sun was not in the proper angle in the afternoon. I tried to fix the proportions according to the law of thirds as much as possible, as shooting in this angle was hard. The nail is on a column and a bit high from the ground level, and also on the edge of a small stairway. I had to play around with my tripod until I made it stable and high up above the stair steps and the ground. My teacher said he likes the texture but because he didn't want to announce the names of the photographers when he viewed the pictures, I decided to keep silent and not explain my motive and the things that went wrong for me. The main concept of this image is loneliness, and if there was a shadow it would complete the meaning I had mind. Loneliness vs. Greatness.

Metallic Design

The second picture was taken for the rail of the stair way at home. After taking the image and uploading it to my PC I've noticed that the front portion (top left corner) is a bit blurry which is something I didn't want in fact. Anyway, my teacher liked the concept but, like I thought also, he said the door and the books on the left were a source of distractions. Unfortunately, I can't remove them, and if I was to take the shot in portrait I believe more distractions would be included. He liked the angle and the blur effect (shallow depth). I would crop the distractions but as I said, I wanted the images untouched as much as possible.

Floral Design

The third image, Floral Design, was also from the stairway rail. I had this idea long time ago (but thinking of a panorama for the stairs alone actually). The image was taken with my Tamron 70-300mm, and probably at 200mm or close to that. I was pointing to the rail from a distance of around 2 or 3 meters (~ 6-9 ft). The reason for this is simply, from a close distance I would be able to put my tripod calmly. Because I didn't use a timer here to take the shot, seems the image was shaken a bit, or it was blurred slightly because I used manual focus (always use it with my Tamron). My teacher noted that there is a little shake in the image when viewed in 100%. At this point, my teacher said that apparently this person (i.e. me) likes textures, which is true. I'm not so fond of portraiture.

Qul

I don't remember really what my teacher said about the fourth image, Qul, but the image you see here is actually the adjusted RAW and not the direct JPG that was viewed in the class. Anyway, it is simply a zoom into some Arabic calligraphy engraved on a wall clock in the main hall (living room). Tamron was also used here and I had to raise the tripod higher than my head. The play was in the WB to give more golden streak to the whole thing. I think it was Flash WB.

The clock in the hall (old picture with illusional adjustments)

My teacher is a school by himself, and I guess I'm lucky to be one of his students. Trying patiently to wait for the big bites of info that will make my brain jump a bit. So far, in Level 1 now, the info encountered are mostly well-known to me. Left to say, all of the images except of the first one were submitted to stock sites, but after RAW adjustments. No HDR this time.
My teacher has an impressive photostream on Flickr. Give it a try. He's a genius! As for me, I still hate Flickr for some reason I don't know. I just reject it mentally!

II. Cuvaitum:

One of the surprises that I've encountered this week is, when I wanted to name one of my pictures in Latin, I've discovered that Google Translation engine did include a translation for "Kuwait" in Latin. I didn't know there would be any translation for it really, as mostly the name, specially Kuwait's, is copied as it is in English into various languages. Kuwait was translated as Cuvaitum.
Last Friday morning, and because of the amazing adjustment in my sleeping time, I woke up in the very early morning (with ease), something that doesn't happen when I think of going to work! Anyway, I didn't want to miss the chance and picked my tools, and specially my VR-Head. I can say, I picked it up half-intentionally. I was hoping that I will do some panorama, but I didn't know just yet for what. After having breakfast I was staring around trying to find something, and even drove along the seaside trying to search for a potential. Finally, my eyes was set on a location that I deem, usually, a taboo. I did take pictures from there before but this location is always dangerous to me (me, being someone with past experience with cops). Kuwait Towers.
Now, Kuwait Towers are a pretty nice target for photography at night more than it is in day time (probably only in very early morning or at sunset when you get some special light qualities). I did take some shots long time ago for the towers when I was experimenting back then with my Canon 350D. Sweet old days.

Humid Towers

Kuwait Towers in A Windy Day

But this time the circumstances are different. Completely different. Day time, early morning, the sun is rising and, a panorama. Maybe one thing is common between the old and the new images: all are HDR, and all were manually tone-mapped.
Since I'm working with a panorama, I had to do it as fast as I can for fear of any "undesired" visitors in the early morning (a bit before 7 a.m.). I skipped working out with the nadir and took only direct shots that I didn't use later on. One panorama, many opportunities...

Towers of The Rising Sun

I know that Japan is the land of the rising sun, but are there towers for the rising sun? Oh well. The main difficulty here lies in cloning out the lower portion. I've cropped a bit from the lower part where the VR-Head shows, but this was not the difficult thing to do. It was my shadow with the tripod. Because the ground had a pattern in formation, it was so hard to make it unique, or maybe I'm out of patience to finish this and I couldn't bear in mind working slowly and copy brick by brick. It is possible to make it unique but it's not for me now. I don't have all the time in the world nor the power (cloning work is done in HDR mode, meaning more processing power). I approached the situation with many tricks, the last was to copy a portion of the right corner and paste it over the left portion where my shadow was (after cloning it already) and then do a layer Blend as in stack focus.
The tone-mapping was done manually, i.e. in Photoshop itself and playing around with the curve of the histogram myself. I've been a good boy here and didn't touch other slides like the Threshold and the Radius which caused me grief in the past, and will never learn how to do them adequately. But before tone-mapping, I had to reduce the luminance of the sun and that was done simply by adding Exposure adjustment layer, and with the White dropper I click on the disk of the sun. The image appeared darker in the beginning while the sun was like a dot in the sky (which is the thing I want actually). You have to bear in mind when you work in this way that this is HDR. The luminance data are there and not gone; maybe shifted, but not gone. With this simple correction in Exposure, I've moved to tone-mapping. All the later versions of this panorama, were tone-mapped in the same manner, but maybe the fixes for my shadow were different a bit.

Planeta Cuvaitum

The great advantage here in tone-mapping with Photoshop (which is something I rarely do right now) is that you have a control over certain areas, even though Photoshop's tone-mapping algorithm is considered Global, meaning it effects the whole pixels in the image in the same time. However, with the help of the curve and the histogram. This way, I was able to make the sun as a disk with a halo around it by doing a "U" curve at the end of the line. This "U" curve simply means "high-low-high"; now imagine this to the sun disk (out-middle-inner part) and you will be getting a bright circle, then darker circle, then bright spot in the middle. Are you following? Hope so! Such control is not possible in Photomatix and I did try indeed doing some effect but nothing worked to my taste.

Although I almost chose my location randomly in the area behind the towers (and hoping to keep me a bit hidden from the eyes wandering on the street in the front), I think now I was lucky to pick this location! This was apparent when I went on doing a TV (Tunnel-View) effect for this panorama...

Crescent Sun Towers

The shape of the crescent was indeed random. I didn't plan it. It just happened to be there when I twisted the panorama. Only one thing is annoying me here though; the patch in the sky. Cloning problems are apparent here as you see. Cropping further to hide my shadow or the bad cloning would cut out the fun from the rest of the images with nice patterns made by the pavement, so, I guess I have to bear it as it is.

Two projections though, didn't appeal much to me but I had to do them after all just to make things complete. The Vertical and the "Wide View" or WV. The WV is a term I've made out myself really, since I didn't find any proper names for it. It is a manipulation of the Little Planet projection by changing the angles of Pitch and Roll mainly and fixing the orientation with the Yew.

Nos Regulam Solis

Cropping the sides in this vertical panorama was a hard issue for me and I'm still not satisfied with the final product here. I felt cropping was screwing the balance of the image in general specially that the sun and the towers are not exactly on the same alignment. I had to do the cropping to the side to remove the highly stretched pixels (which is normal in such type of panoramas of course). I think what makes it so hard to decide with the crop is the diagonal lines in the image itself which, if straight, would make for a unidirectional look on the whole thing.

Dancing Towers

Not one of my favorites really. The Dancing Towers is supposed to be something with a comedy twist after all. The twists in the tower were made in HDR mode before tone-mapping by using the Wrap option in Photoshop. The tone-mapping (and adjusting curves later on) didn't help me to add some strong contrast but rather darkening the ground. The other problem was that the ground and the sky portions were too much compared to the main subject: the tower and the sun. I had to crop and cropping here wasn't easy either. The subjects of interest are nudged to the left rather than the center or one of the points of the law of thirds.

QTVR

I was drooling to do a QTVR out of this panorama but unfortunately, things were not easy. The fact that the panorama was tone-mapped manually in Photoshop made me lose one key option here, which is very important for making a QTVR: the seamless blend. In Photomatix, this is simply done by ticking one option while tone-mapping; the "360 panorama" option. I don't know yet how to blend the left and right side seamlessly still using Photoshop as my search on the net was in vain. I even tried to put the final panorama into Photomatix and stabilize the sliders as much as possible to keep the look (changing only the Gamma to fix the contrast) and turning on the 360 panorama option, but even that was in vain. Probably the only real benefit that I've gained so far from such search is to know how to add a label or a logo to my panorama instead of the nadir point in more comfortable way, using PTGui. You can find the tips here in the Support/FAQ webpage of PTGui (with many many other useful info that I didn't read before). The QTVR might need some time to load, plus, of course, the QuickTime plugin.

III. Land, Paper, Wall:

On land, it was the ruins of Hore Abbey, which moved to my camera's sensor to be printed later on. Mom desired something to fit in the living room to change the scenery and she was so fond of Ashford castle in fact, an awkward handheld panorama taken back in 2009 in Co. Mayo, Ireland.

Ashford Castle

Unfortunately, when viewed in 100% I've found that the middle portion of the image is out of focus. Probably I was working in AF mode (a big mistake in panorama venture). The greens also don't appear as they are when converted to CMYK system. I had to convert because of previous experience with this printing shop which seems RGB is not appreciated much (although an expert told me that it is a single print and they should be able to produce it properly in RGB). Anyway, the mistake with the focus was a killer enough to abandon the idea. So, mom picked another shot, the ruins of Hore. I have to say I'm really proud now that she picked my stuff!

Ruins of Hore hanging on the wall of the living room.

The print and the frame prices were fair I'd say, but while watching the process going on (in 2 days) I really wished to have my own tools. I fell in love really with the HP designjet 800ps in the printing shop, but unfortunately it is discontinued, and for sure it costs a fortune!

My signature. Still think it sucks!

However, one of the things that I was limited with is, the type of paper that I could pick. In fact, there was only one variety. I'm sure there are several papers out there that are better (and more expensive, I know), but there was only one type so I had to put it down with that. I wasn't ready to move around to other place to check.
The next thing was, after the print and checking the colors, I went to the framing shop. As I expected they were not that professional I would expect but they did a good job with the frame. I was a little upset about it because when I went back to the framing shop to give them a leaflet with my own signature, the print was rolled up and kept between other stuff. I was a bit angry inside because this is not the way to deal with a print. Also, the matting they provided was not thick enough and seems merely like a cardboard. The leaflet I brought was not stuck or anything but merely fixed, and I didn't get the chance to sign on the matting myself. Anyway, after all, mom is happy with it. I only wish if I have the money to get all these stuff together in one place and do my own prints. My printer supports A4 size maximum, but I wish to have one with A3 size capabilities. Would be awesome and in fact, more elegant to frame in that size I think.
I'm trying now to finish this lovely thin book which my friend got me for my birthday (but didn't get the chance to give it to me in time). It is a practical book and to the point, for beginners. I want to write something for now, but I don't know what. So much is gushing out, yet little words are coming in my mind. For one moment I just wish if I can sit down, one leg on the other, and my palms behind my head, and stare into the world... maybe thinking of No Other Worlds...

Hibiscus Addiction...

However I try to take it slowly seems my life pace just doesn't want me to. Having hard time cutting out my coffee habits and drinking hibiscus instead to lower down the blood pressure as much as possible whenever possible. I'm sick of the traffic jams everyday, so I'm having a little vacation for myself. Just one week off work trying to have fun (sleeping) as I like and going out as I like (whatever!). I might even try to go to Failaka and check for other locations here and there in this deserted island. On the other hand, I'm trying to enjoy my time in weekends, pulling myself back to the seaside and the photography there. Now with my Tamron 70-300mm I can sort of aim at birds from, somewhat, conventional distances, like I did some weeks ago with that lovely heron...

The Observer

I was lucky that he (or she!) didn't move and fly away directly. I took tens of images for it while it was moving and this is just one of them. The dusty weather here made me add lot of enhancements in the image (and nope, it's not in HDR technique). Herons are said to keep a constant distance from people, thus every time you get closer they would step further away to keep the distance for their own safety sake. However, seems the rule is not included in the situation here! I was stepping on the rocks and algae in a fast pace with my camera attached to the monopod with its 3 mini-legs spread trying to take some nice position. Another target for my Tamron was the morning sun with its sweet reddish hue in the horizon and the not-so-harsh beam of light. In fact, it was bright, but with minimizing the aperture (high f-number) and speeding up the shutter speed, I was able to catch a simple, yet interesting, image...

Sunspots

If you see the image in a larger view, you will notice some small black dots in the direction of 7 o'clock. I've read once that such black dots, in early morning, can be in fact for Mercury and/or Venus passing over the disk of the sun, but it can be also sunspots probably! However, I have to say that taking pictures for the sun with a normal DSLR is a dangerous trial, because it can harm the sensor severely. Just be careful in case you want to try something like that.
But not only suns, herons and Tamrons would go together, as I was chasing a pigeon with my Canon 18-55mm all the way to the moment of its flight above the ground. The reason I was chasing it actually was not for mere fun nor that I did indeed want to, but it was something completely different...

Acrobat

The story behind this shot was: I was in the Marina Crescent, the opposing side of the Marina Mall here in Salmiyah (area or city, whatever). I was in the exact position that you may check in the link above after taking pictures from the beach, not far from this location. After working on taking pictures for the yachts in the marina some sucker called a SECURITY came to me saying gibberish with "forbidden" at the end (in Arabic of course). I said sure, and walked away with my tools. I knew he was following me with his eyes so I walked to my car not far from the location and put my stuff there except of the camera and my 18-55mm lens, with a fisheye lens in my pocket. In fact, I was almost finished from the location but I just wanted to take a picture of the palm trees reflection on water when this sucker came in! I took a walk trying to get back to my previous position or to the opposite side of the marina to get a better view for the reflection, but there was another sucker roaming around and looking at me as well, hence I knew there was no way around it. On the other side of the dock, on the beach, there was this lonely pigeon walking around so I decided to play with it a bit hoping that this sucker will move away and leave me alone, but after taking all these images for the pigeon, he was still there, so I had to get back home.

However, after this little drama, I did have the chance to use my fisheye once and my 18-55mm another time to take pictures for the yachts and try even a 3D shoot. I'm going to share them here despite all the suckers in security suits who suck and make me sick of this suckering sickening world! (yeah, try to say that again fast enough...)

Yachts Awaiting... (BW,3D)

Yahcts Awaiting... (Color,3D)

Vivid Yachts

Vivid Yachts (3D)

Taking a new venture now with my camera, trying to take 3D photos, but this time, real 3D photos. This is done usually by rotating the object in constant angles and taking a snap at every angle. Supposedly later on, you would need some program to make this "object QTVR" rotating. The more angles, the smoother transition you would get. However, my aim now is not to rotate the object, but to make it "flat".
Unfortunately for me, things doesn't work like it is in spherical panoramas in the big big world. PTGui does not realize surfaces that easily and was not able to connect them to make a flat "peeled" surface of the object, even after putting my own control points to guide it through like blind. Seems there is no escape from doing this manually with Photoshop as it was in the old days when I saw one tutorial about this for doing a profile for a man's face and making it flat like if it was peeled (like an orange). This way you can see all features of the object without the need to rotate it or anything! This, to me, is more beneficial than creating a rotating QTVR. So far, I've failed, but I'm planning to continue with this.
My tools here were simple (in my terms as I didn't have to buy anything). I already have the VR-head (yeah, bought that back in 2009 or 2010) which can be used as a turntable base when disassembled. I looked around and didn't find something better than a CD and some kids' clay. Fixed the CD on the top of the base of the detached turning node of my VR-head with the clay and used some clay on the top of the CD to stabilize my object: A Seashell.
Now, we got some problems here:

1. The CD's reflective backside might not be good impression in general for the high and wide spectra reflected from it. It's better to be a white or black background below the object.
2. Because of my laziness, I used my monopod on its 3 tiny legs, which was shaky of course, specially with my 70-300mm macro lens. The turntable itself was fitted on my old tripod. Maybe it's not an issue but I didn't feel like removing my tripod from my car. It is already there for video recording!
3. Unable to put proper lighting, thus I depended solely on the room's lights without playing around. I can't attach the lights to the tripod and I don't have carriers for them.

One product though is quite useful and it is a complete set (beside having a turntable, it is generally a softbox) can be found from EZcube products here. It's a nice set for serious people, but since I'm not giving much thought about it, I will continue working on what I have. After all, seems as I said before, Photoshop is the one to solve the problem for profiling the object in a flat shape...

The Seashell on the CD. The yellow spot under is the clay holding the CD to the rotating base, and also there is a piece of clay under the shell itself to stick it a bit to the CD. Rotating the base was not an easy task as I thought.

Although increasing the amount of angles taken into the camera for the object would make a better transition, but since I'm not apt to make a rotating object in 3D but a flat body of the object, I'm planning to study somehow the relation between the field of view, and the size of the object, and how many angles are needed in minimum to take all the details of the object. This is tricky. Because we are using here lenses of changing focal lengths and zooming plays a role, thus it's hard to tell what's exactly the field of view we got at hand. I know there must be some formulas for this, but for the time being, I will try to stay away from those and hypothesize that the object fills the field of view (FOV). I need a paper and pen now. Back to the old days of Physics. Just imagine how it is useful to see a jar, a can, or even a car, made into a flat image to study all the details and connections at once, like a plan for making a cube! Awesome isn't it?

On the other hand, there had been some work on the other 3D realm; The Anaglyphs. I try to make one every time I get the chance (and I think I will do one for the seashell above). However, last week I got the chance to stay awake all the way to the morning time and headed to the beach for snapping some shots with the sunrise. I was late abit but nevertheless, it did the job and I had the chance to make myself dirty a bit in the sand (or mud?). Yes! Walking on the sand is really awesome! I felt really refreshed, and my footprints proved for real that I do have FLAT feet...

Steps (HDR of course)

This image is taken with a fisheye lens and cropped from the top to make the destination somehow aimless. I was moving my lens here and there, left and right trying to figure out the best way of mimicking the left and right vision in order to combine it all in one anaglyph. It was hard I have to say, as it is normally with a fisheye lens, but at home and after viewing the slides, I made the central focusing point to be the heel print of the first step at the bottom as it was the most stable one with moving the camera few degrees to the right...

Steps (3D)

I don't think this is a really good one though. But a new experiment for me was to take pictures for the junk that was dumped in front of my work place (yeah, we have so much respect here), and believe if I say so, JUNK is not a junk to the camera. When you go for HDRs or even normal images, junk can be a good source for inspiration, really...

Junk

Now, as you can see, I don't know what the hell this pipe was used for, oil or gas or water, whatever. But this same pipe, gave me a valuable lesson here. The bad point though (and this was taken with my fisheye lens as well) is that I was focusing to infinity, making near by objects blurred a bit like this pipe here, but nevertheless, the effect is there! Just get your 3D glasses ready...

Junk (3D)

Concentrate on the pipe here. The circular head of the pipe is the center point of focusing (i.e. in layering the 2 images together, not the camera focusing itself). It seems, to me, that one of the good points to make a 3D image is to make the object in a non-dull position, and by non-dull position I mean simply, not into a straight line all the way, horizontally or vertically. Make some movement in your scene; foreground close object and far background or such is the case here with my image, a diagonal line (the pipe) with some perspective look as if it is popping out of the page.
One further point to mention here is that in processing the 3D images, you have to have in mind that after all you will crop the image to remove some excess parts that don't go along with your image, thus the resulting image could be smaller way too much sometimes (specially if it was taken in a fisheye lens).

Now to explain one funny coincidence before posting this. It's an image that I've called Departed. In this image I was aiming to the horizon and the sun with my fisheye lens, forgetting about the footprints that I've made myself on the sand and that a fisheye lens does have a wider FOV. After getting back home I've noticed that my footprints were in the view and cutting them out (keeping the ratio aspect 3:4) would actually minimize the scene so much. Finally, I decided to leave it like that and give the picture a theme... Departed!

Departed

My point here is: Whatever, however, your image was, you can always do something about it. That is, if you like to! The real thing now is whether this is applicable in real life or not, or is it possible or not.

Alexander 6, V19.

It's Thursday! Can you believe it! WEEKEND!


It was a disappointment really. Staying on the roof yeterday before sunset until it was all over and no sign for the promised crescent. Seems the agenda's notes was dedicated more to people with astronomical interests. I do have that interest but I'm just not so deep in it. Professionals got their telescopes I guess. Or maybe, the roof is not a good place amid all that fogged like view. However, I did take some photographs of the sun in its setting with my 55-200mm lens.
What I did was that, I took 3 shots every few minutes totaling 3 shots on 3 times (that is 9 images). With the help of Photomatix, I batch-processed the set, resulting in 3 OpenEXR images. Then with Photoshop I combined the 3 altogether in one image resulting in something like cartoons... a moving sun. Tone-mapping made in 2 ways, the usual; Manual and by Photomatix.

Photomatix Version

Manual Tone-mapping

The noise in the images are really, really, REALLY driving me mad. I still can't recognize whether they are from the lens, or the sensor. But it does seem that the telephone has more of that noise rather than the regular lens (18-55mm). 

The Photomatix version seems nicer to me, despite the noise and spots, but after all I had to add extra adjustment layers for other purposes. The manual tone-mapping produced some effect like a silhouette, but I was surprised then that when I added some adjustment layers to fix the hue of the image that some banding occured. I saved the image that way anyway. I'm not interested in fixing it for now. But this experience made me think of possible shots in the future, for the sun or moon, or for any other movement to snap.

I've been working as well with a photo of my eyes, and I produced 2 images from the same RAW file. I'm not sure they are good for stock sites but I'm going to try my luck anyway.

I called them the "beast eyes" or simple, The Beast. The two images are not produced by bracketed exposures (although originally, I did it for that purpose to compose an HDR later on). I felt like working with the brightest image on that sequence of 3 images. Of course the image you see here is a result of extensive editing, otherwise it would sound more like a dull image, wouldn't it? I'm thinking of submitting the latter for the stocks, but I think my chances are somehow less than 50%, since stock sites deal with the noise or grains as a form of noise always, and not an expressive style. I've tried it already with the images of me giving different facial expressions. Canstockphoto accepted them, while Bigstockphotos refused them for the grains.

Well, not much had been done to the transliteration today. Let's see the fuss next week with the visit of the Ambassador!
__________
433. then the hero prepared for his long journey
434. he took food and water and the blessings from the shepherds
435. and went on to the north over the deserts
436. where he encountered many ruins
437. many castles and many wells of no use
438. just left for the sands to be eaten
439. just like Qafra or even worse
440. and some days passed away until water became scarce
441. then the hero glanced from afar some signs of living
442. amid the sand storm he was trying to view clearly
443. but his power did not help him stand up against the wind
444. and with the heat of his body he had to give up
445. and he closed his eyes and fainted
446. he did not feel a thing until he opened his eyes
447. to find himself in a tent which the wind played by
448. and no one beside him except of a bowl of water
449. he almost wanted to drink that water
450. his throat was sore and felt like thorns
451. but he couldn't drink the water in the bowl
452. for it smelled strong and made him dizzy
453. and while he was gazing around trying to understand
454. when suddenly the tent ripped open
455. and a huge built man-like creature got inside
456. but the hero did not find his sword to grasp

Busted...

Despite the fact that I was tired and stayed awake for more than 12 hours, yet I couldn't sleep more than 4 hours. I had the urge to go on photoshooting just one hour before the sunrise. I didn't have any plan of what to snap, so I just went on into the streets hoping to find something, and then voila! I did find it.
It was a sloping down road, surrounded by trees (people who know the place, it is the branching road from 5th ring road into the Maghrib Highway). After taking shots, aiming at some panoramic view, I was surprised by a police patrol who stopped by to ask me about what I was doing. I was questioned just because I was standing in a straight line with some building called the "control tower" which has some controls for electricity and water I think. He said that I would be considered like a terrorist who is getting some information (well he said that indirectly). Anyway, I was lucky that I got the photos I wanted for a panorama shot before his arrival. Now after looking at the pictures and processing them I found out that I made a mistake that I didn't shoot with high shutter speed instead. There were few cars passing by, but the main blur was from the moving trees because of the somewhat tough wind that was there. The funny thing is, while shooting, some cars passed by and the shutter was still closed, and that created some funny noise in the images but it doesn't bother me at all. I called it the "Laser-beams effect." You see only red lines in the middle with no car showing! Hopefully I would post some of this here later when I settle on some good shot.
After moving from that place, after being annoyed with that cop, I decided to go to the seashore, but not my usual spot, but to some mall. The Marina Mall Crescent. There is a marina (sea port) with yachts there, so I tried my luck to shoot there as well and made it for a panoramic sequence. I need to do a lot with those files, specilaly that they are in RAW (CR2) format and not in JPG, which makes it even sensitive somehow and not directly to be dealt with as JPG files. They say RAW files are better for HDR composition.
That's all with my life for the time being after a dull and tiresome week, and a boring weekend as usual! Ta da!

Pain Pain Pain...

Sounds like if my life is a wreck.

The pain in my right ear is increasing. It increased right after using the medicine given to me by the doctor. I feel like if the right side of my face is paralyzed. I guess I need to take more painkillers.

I took the sick kitty right now. I feel sorry for him. I didn't want to see him dying with such bad conditions. No one is helping me in the house to take care of him, and apparently my life is a mess right now and can't get a grip of it. I put him somewhere, near the seashore, just before what they call the "Marina Mall Crescent." I laid him on the grass and put some tuna on a paper dish for him there maybe he would be able to get up again and eat, though I don't see any hope there. I spent like KD30 for the vet to take care of him, but nothing changed. I guess he has a great malfunction or disease. I hated to do it, but I hate more to see him dying in front of my eyes without being able to do anything for him. God, Thy mercy.

I guess I won't be able to go out this weekend at all. I was planning to go back to Failaka in the coming days just to check for more sites, but I guess this is not possible with such pain in my head. My only choice is to relax, completely and not moving at all.

I need to write down a word in my diary...