Breathing Still…

Flipping through my activities as the summer goes on and on... and on. With a sigh, I just can't wait for it to be over. It is just the beginning of July now, but we had our share of dust storms and humidity which leaves me wondering what is left for August and the rest of July already?! My body is typically exhausted more because of the change in temperatures between indoors and outdoors. Ah, and mentioning dust, I didn't let this opportunity pass without something to do. I remember one time I did shoot a panorama in a dusty weather, and this time I did use the dust to my "amusement" again; With the help of the microscope. The same old junky microscope.

Dusty

The frequent waves of dust lately reminded me of some of my studies back in the days when I was in college. In geology classes, specially those related to mineralogy, we used to work with reflective microscopes to check specific properties of the minerals. One of those most important features was to find the refractive index, if I remember correctly, which could help greatly in identifying the mineral at hand. That feature was investigated using polarized light. All of these information was somewhere there in my mind and I thought: Why not?
Things are not similar, of course, between the situation in classes with prepared mineral sample and the dust at home with an old junky microscope. However, it was an interesting encounter nonetheless. I started by collecting a dust sample from the outside during the "storm" (the wind is not always strong enough to be called a storm though, so I prefer the term "dust wave"). The collection was done using a paper cup (though I really wanted something bigger) and leaving it outside for about one day or a bit less. Tiny amounts of dust accumulated there, so I washed the cup a bit with distilled water (the type used for car maintenance) and poured a little on the glass slide. Couldn't wait for the water to evaporate, so I placed a lamp (tungsten) close to the slide to dry it out and leave the residue only. And that's it! The sample was ready! All is left is to secure it with a glass cover glued with nail polish.

Dust Sample - 40x
Mobile shot.

First, I wanted to mimic the method of the reflective microscope as we used it the labs back in the day, and actually this is somewhat done by force; Because having a light going through the sample yields nothing but silhouettes! So, I had to close the aperture below the stage and move the light source (desk lamp with LED) a bit upward to shine the light over the surface of the slide and it worked like magic! To my surprise, the dust sample was not made of... dust! There were strange particles looming around and some round objects which might be pollen (and this is quite natural); But what about those other hard stuff? I did check dust and mineral samples before during my studies and I can definitely say this is nothing like it! Now imagine we are breathing this...

Dust Sample (51.2x)
Canon EOS 7D

After a simple mobile shot, it was the turn for more serious work with the DSLR. My main interest was this portion of the sample where a spherical object appears; I'm guessing it is pollen. Not sure though. For beginners, I kept my the magnification power low since going deep would squander about lot of details. Thus, I worked first with my usual 50mm lens in reverse (providing about 1.28x magnification) in combination of 40x (total) in the microscope, thus yielding about 51.2x in total magnification. Then, it was time to move to a higher level.

Dust Sample (660x)
Canon EOS 7D

On the next level of magnification, I've changed the lens to Voigtländer 20mm, which gives a magnification power of about 3.2x when reversed alone (using Vello Macrofier), but there is a little catch here. Extension tubes.
Adding extension tubes with this lens on reverse yields about 6.6x. Now this, combined with 100x on the microscope, yields about 660x! Probably for a reader these number don't mean much, but for someone working with a microscope AND a digital camera, it does make a difference, simply because framing the object of interest (our spherical body here) would change because the scene is under more magnification power. Thus, even after fixing the scene in the microscope with the naked eye, it would be adjusted again in terms of focus AND framing (by moving the glass slide on the stage of the microscope), which is quite a tedious work to be done. As expected here, the image quality at such a high magnification is not quite "sharp" or interesting as it was in lower magnification but it was just about enough to show those details on the surface of this spherical object which looks like the surface of Mars! I'm not sure if any of the stack images were shaken a bit during the making of the 660x image, but surely the color aberration and other distortions have their own effect on the quality of the image. I tried to reduce as much as I can and sharpen the image (after minimizing it).
As I've stated earlier, I was trying to mimic the work of a reflective microscope with this old piece of junk. Thus, I gave it a go and tried using a polarizer BUT on the lens (which was hard to control while fitted into Vello's Macrofier). Anyway, nothing interesting appeared and no change in the light level at all. I think the polarizing effect must be applied to the light source itself rather than on the lens receiving the light rays. I have also tried to shoot in infrared (just a quickie one) but, again, nothing interesting happened and the image was just in B&W and no additional gains. Now after this "little" work with this sample, I'm somewhat feeling the urge to collect more samples of dust (since we are on a roll here) or maybe work further on this very same sample looking for other features in it; I did see some stuff that might be of interest!

Escaping Still

Just felt the need to add this section as a continuation for the post about the panorama I did few weeks ago. After completing the "regular" projection, I started stitching some other projections, and for the most part, I didn't bother myself in correcting the stitching errors as I'm not planning anything "big" with those projections; Yet.

Escape The Shining

I did a number of stitches but I won't bother listing all of them here, but I'd rather just show those which I think have some potential, like the one above, Escape The Shining. This one was done using Mercator vertical projection, with a twist, and I quite prefer it over the regular vertical projection. I still, though, regret the fact that I put the sofa to block the entrance which appears here in the upper left corner; It could have been all black and thus adding more to the symmetry and balance, I believe.

Planeta Effugium

But probably the most beloved of all the versions I've made out of this panorama is the little planet projection, Planeta Effugium. Originally, it was less interesting really, but yet more plausible than its predecessor, the tunnel projection (the invert of this one). However, once I decided to play a bit and see the results, I got shocked somehow when I inverted the colors and the whole scene became like a negative slide. To add a bit to the twist, I've eliminated this inversion effect from the hand and the black space, the whole scene is somewhat a mix between original and inverted colors. I've also tried to make the whole image as a pure B&W but after many changes and fluctuations, I decided to leave it as it is and hence it became a bit red and yellow when colors were inverted (originally it had a hint of blue).

IR950

Well, IR950 is the name of one of the infrared filters I've got lately; A product from Neewer. The set of 4 filters was pretty cheap that I still can't believe they do really do some infrared work! But well, seems it works well so far. Except that, apparently, the make is not tight enough and the glass is shaking by now. I'm quite interested in this filter specifically because of its presumed property: threshold of 950nm. Which makes even higher than Kodak's infrared gel filter (87B) which has its threshold at about 820nm (or 830nm? Oh well). The 87B class of filters of such threshold are sometimes called X-Ray Infrared filters (just a mockery) for how they sometimes expose features under specific fabrics (with certain thickness of course), and this name was actually used in Neewer's title for this set of filters. These filters can also yield interesting results when shooting the skin, as they can show traces of veins, and this is something I need to work on a bit.

Sample shots done with IR950.

I've been testing all the filters in this test but I had a keen interest in IR950 as I said before. For fun, I started shooting (with the camera!) family members using the on-camera flash and raising ISO to the max point (12,800), as well as a quick selfie. Despite the high ISO, cleaning the images (in small sizes) was reasonable and some sharpness was added as well. Usually high ISOs, specially with cameras of cropped sensors like mine, produce a muddy-looking images, but probably the case is also different when it comes to infrared photography (even though classically, infrared images are known for their grainy soft look). The interesting thing here is: Usually, calibrating the white balance in-camera would not quite fix the problem with Photoshop when editing the RAW file. I'd still need to change the camera profile in Photoshop to Infrared profile in order to compensate for the limitation in the color temperature and tint in Photoshop. However, RAW files of shots done with IR950 do not behave that way despite being clearly infrared. They do appear as they were shot in-camera without any modification. Saying this, I just realized that I didn't check how the image would appear shooting with this filter WITHOUT calibrating the white balance in-camera.

A Nose With Personality
Collage.

I like the tones of blacks and whites even before editing them in Photoshop; They attract attention, as well as fear at some point because of the contrast maybe, and that adds more surrealism to the subject I presume which triggered me to do this "funny"collage of my selfie and my brother's face in A Nose With Personality. In fact, some people did indeed state that it IS scary rather than just a funny surreal image! While bring on a roll, I didn't want to miss the chance to test this filter with a panorama of course.

The Pano-Work

Seeing how the sun shines through a window pane over the stairs at home, I got triggered to try to do something about this. I did in fact shoot many simple shots before and recently for this play of sun beams over the steps, but now it was time to put my IR950 to some good use and see. A panorama.
Now, because IR950 is a circular filter and must be attached to the lens front, I had no choice but to use my next option for panorama shooting; The Voigtländer 20mm lens. I've tested this lens before in shooting panoramas, and at the regular settings of my panorama-head (shooting at every 30 degrees and counting as much as 12 shots per circle) and generally speaking, not many stitching problems occurred. However, the displacement between one angle and another with such lens is quite large and for this, to avoid any mishaps in working in such narrow space like the stairs, I changed the setting on my panorama-head to 24 degrees, making a total of 15 shots per circle. This change is not only done to the horizontal swipe, but also to the vertical swipe as well; Instead of shooting at every 45 degrees up and down, this was changed to 30 degrees (thus shooting at 30 degrees AND 60 degrees, and finally 90 degrees if needed). Wander with your imagination and think of such amount of shots we need to complete one scene: (15x5)+2= 77 shots for one scene, and we are not speaking of HDR yet!

Ghosted

The first problem, in practice, was to settle the camera down on such stairs and make it balanced as much as possible. I can't say I've done this perfectly but I was hoping on fixing the issue later on when assigning the horizon line and fixing the vertical lines before stitching the panorama. However, another problem occurred here unfortunately; Many shots were featureless and could not be connected to others in the scene -and this somehow made me wish that I worked with the old settings of my panorama-head but it's too late now- and finally, I had to satisfy myself with some of the scene and cropping the rest that simply didn't work and stitch properly. You can see that I've added some sandals and shoes in Ghosted, as my main idea was actually confrontation but seeing how the tones turned out as typically as they are for this filter, I've changed my mind and let my mind wander to its darker side in assigning a title to this.

Ghosted II

Not being a full panorama means there are limitations in projections and looks I can achieve with this panorama. For a try, I've used the vedutismo style in Ghosted II which added depth to the center while, supposedly, keeping straight verticals. To add drama a bit here, I didn't convert the panorama to B&W like its first predecessor, but rather inverted the colors like I did before in Planeta Effugium with some twist in blending to keep some areas original without inverting their colors. Yet more, I added some touches to improve the spooky look, like applying radial blur to an extra layer and blending it with soft light.
This is all to it for the time being and after this experience and this number of shots involved in this work, I might consider switching back shooting in 30 degrees with Voigtländer 20mm despite the hazard of having misplaced features or features not connected between two successive shots. This is of course when need arise.
On the other hand, there is still some thoughts and ideas I need to check about this filter and I do not have the capabilities to test it with. Like, does this filter really have a threshold of 950nm? After my bad experience with Tiffen's hot mirror, I hesitate to trust whatever the specs from the manufacturer say about the product. There is also the issue of the infrared source. According to Neewer's guideline, they propose each filter of different threshold to be used for specific conditions (and in dedication to landscape photography) with IR950 to be used under the harsh sun. This, however, doesn't work with me that way for sure and I need to explore my options with infrared sources and how do they react with the subject at hand; Specifically, the skin and whether the infrared source under question is good to show the veins under the skin in a photo, or penetrate specific fabrics (or even night vision as some claim). So much to discover with this filter alone, not mentioning the others as well.

Finale

I could've made the story longer here and talk about my shell collection and going back to documenting them but I think it is enough for the time being. I'll leave the issues of these shells for another time. There are more shells waiting to be documented.
Meanwhile, as I'm typing these words, I'm thinking seriously of leaving the Instagram community and gain some of my peace of mind (and more time to do other things), but the main issue here is the ridiculous updates and changes that Instagram comes up with every now and then. I'm still considering the idea though and didn't decide for sure yet. There is the issue of exposing and displaying my images to the public but probably it is not much of an impact, since I'm not getting many Likes on Instagram as well not comments; Thanks to some relatives and random visitors who appreciate what I do (or simply do it as a duty when it comes to my relatives).
There seems to be so much on my plate; Ideas, projects, experiments… yet seems I'm not doing much with them. I blame it on the summer and the heat that brings down all my strength but let's face it; I'm lazy after all. During this time, I'm waiting for my new passport to be issued, but would I really travel? I don't know. No plans whatsoever.
In poetry, I do have some words visiting and going and I'm really trying to force myself on writing it down. I just need that glitch in time between work and home (and responsibilities at home) to focus on writing. Unlike photography, writing coherent words and translating feelings on a paper (or typing them down) is probably as exhaustive as shooting a photo, or even more at times. Mentioning poetry, I was surprised that one of the poems that I've posted on Writing.com did get the 1st place award and a ribbon (with some award points with that). It came as surprise to me since I'm not checking my email in that website regularly and totally forgot about that contest within the website. Probably I've posted that poem here before, but I'm posting here again to finalize the post and leave you with it for reading it at your own pace, if you like!

Aman Aman

Not black and white but splashing colors,
worldly, such a never ending course.
No left, no right, nor wrong or even just,
aman aman, nor my mind I can trust.

Aman aman, O trembling Bulbul,
tweeting loudly in a funeral?
How does your spirit work I wonder indeed,
for seldom a smile had been in my need.

Seldom does it shine, if would, it could,
for sorrows I never understood.
O Bulbul to whom the tweet and the dance?
or maybe a salute to some past romance?

Salute me by the morn or by noon,
whether under the heat or the moon.
Take this core where it never had befitted,
in hope! May my grinning face be permitted.

When the blooms of May may surrender,
and off life bereft be the tender.
Lull me O Bulbul, and put me to sleep,
Aman aman, my eyes need not to weep.

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...

Arithmetical Endeavor

I can't believe it's Thursday already. I don't feel even being in this office and typing this! I'm fasting, true, but who said I can't sleep more? I'm just hoping the weather would stay stable as it is now...

Yet, who said you should adhere to the bad weather? Well, maybe from the safety side, yes it's better not to do anything with your camera without proper cautions taken care of. Well, I don't have such cautions, but I decided to work in the dust when we had a strike of a dust wave (as usual, every weekend). I didn't do much with my VR-head for some time now so I've decided to go and try it out there, in the yard of my own home...

Still a Home

The tone-mapping of this HDR panorama got me by surprise. My aim was to find a yellowish hue for the image but when tone-mapping I found out that however I change the slides it just turns out with some shade of magenta. Even Color Balance in Photoshop did not correct much of it. Not planning to do it as a QTVR, so I've decided to cut out the bottom and some of the top instead of cloning out as usual. I'm studying now more methods for easier Nadir shooting. I have to admit though that I was lazy here. I needed to do more of "selective" tone-mapping; like tone-mapping two versions of the HDR and then overlapping them and do some masking between the two. The level of black is exaggerated to add some melodrama and melancholy to the scene by the fact that it's a dust wave accumulating on the ground (taken at noon, the dust wave started around morning).
Not one of my favorites I have to say, anyway I had to do one more task with this panorama; tunneling. This time though, I had to go further before tone-mapping and do some edition in Photoshop to ensure the yellowish hue for the whole panorama and avoid that magenta look and shade. Some cropping as well was used just to remove a remnant of the tripod handle in the stitched image.

Being a Grain of Sand

The title was inspired by Simply Red's song Say You Love Me, because when I saw such a view after the final adjustments, I couldn't help but to feel tiny compared to the structure (which is supposedly to be my home!). Speaking of yellow of course doesn't mean to make it bright (I hate yellow), but a dark golden hue is fine. I think it's attractive to the eye.
This simple experiment now is pushing me further to think more about abilities and capabilities in panoramas venture. I'm quite convinced now that my tripods are not useful to this VR-head at all. Specially that the handle of the tripod would show up in the panoramas (and it is large and needs to be cloned out carefully). One of the methods for shooting the nadir might be useful in compensating this and dropping out the appearance of this handle in the panorama (by using Point of View optimizing in some detailed work). I hve to try this out one day.
Beside the tripods, I've realized that I can subtract a vertical panorama out of a full panorama! However, it's not going to be an easy task and if I'm aiming for a vertical panorama originally, then I better do it that way. The thing is, I never tried doing a vertical panorama with my VR-head, and to do so I need to flip the Vr-head (L-shaped) to make it horizontal, so the camera would rotate in a circle vertically. Not an easy task with such head mounted on such tripods I have already. This is one of the reasons to think about a new specialized tripod with exchangeable head, if possible.
However, beside this technical observation, I'm not somehow aware of the necessity to stabilize my work with panoramas in a coherent way; that is to make my procedures with every panorama I tend to do more regular and similar. Such regularization would make my work easier on computer in case I needed to extract a file from the whole set for any purpose, like that for a vertical panorama. Making a mental note now, I've decided to:

• In each row, I will be taking 13 angles (0 degrees to 0/360 degrees) instead of 12. Used to do a mix between the two method, but I have to fix the number of angles in each row to this. One extra shot might be useful later on.
• Despite the difficulties that I will encounter, I need to take a row at 45 degrees up and down. In the above panorama of my home, I tried to take two rows down at 25 and 50 degrees, hoping that would help to clone out the legs of the tripod naturally, but I was wrong. We are back to the old ways.
• Two zenith and one nadir shots will be taken, each perpendicular to each other. This would help me out later on in case I need to extract a vertical panorama from the full panorama. Usual angles are 0 and 90. Complications expected for nadir.
• Shoot the upper 45 degrees first, then 45 degrees below second. This is to keep the numbering of the slides unique for every panorama I would have to go through, e.g. slide #14 will always point to the shot taken at 0 degrees tilting 45 degrees upward (0,45).
• Always shoot Zenith and Nadir at the end. Zenith first, and Nadir second. Nadir though is still to be considered as I'm trying to find ways to overcome this hard angle.

This said, it leaves me with some calculations to do to know where I stand and what I'm needing here, excluding the fact that I always shoot for HDR panoramas, I will count the number of angles as single images:

• 13 angles X 3 rows (0,45,-45) = 39 shots.
• 2 Zenith + 1 Nadir (might be 2 with complications) = 3 (or 4).
• Total: 42 shots (or 43).
• Slide numbers for the 4 basic directions would be (number,angle of rotation): [(1,0),(4,90),(7,180),(10,270),(13,360)] @ 0 degrees vertical. [(14,0),(17,90),(20,180),(23,270),(26,360)] @ 45 degrees upward. [(27,0),(30,90),(33,180),(36,270),(39,360)] @ 45 degrees downward.
• Zenith will be on slides 40 and 41. Nadir will be on slide 42 and beyond.

I hope this systematic division of the panorama procedures would make it easier later on to solve problems as well whenever they occur before stitching (e.g. adjusting the exposure with respect to the surrounding slides).

• Ardeaglais Cormaic Into Play:

Speaking of the vertical panoramas above, I've had a try with one of the first panoramas I've taken back in Ireland, in Cashel: Ardeaglais Cormaic, or Cormac's Cathedral, situated on the top of Cashel Rock hill, along with the castle of Cashel Rock.
The reason I chose this panorama specifically to work with and try to extract a vertical panorama from, is the dome that decorated the zenith in that place. I have to admit though I didn't situate myself exactly in the center under the dome but it was good enough to show the details of this dome. It would look great, I thought, to find the pillars that hold the dome in a weird shape going up and down and connected to two grounds; up and below.
Several difficulties arose. First, I had to re-merge the images into HDR, because I've deleted the previous files that were done for this place (to save place). Picking the required slides for this vertical panorama from the whole set was relatively an easy task (but a matter of memorizing the place in mind and picking the required ones). At this point, the matter of having a vertical panorama done directly at the place, and with the camera moving up and down in a circle, showed evidently. If I was do it again, I would set the camera in landscape orientation and go from horizon to horizon in almost a full circle (excluding the nadir point). This way, with a fisheye lens, I would have a wide-enough view to stitch over.
Our case here was different. The full panorama, and because of the VR-head, was taken with the camera being in portrait position, and because of this I had to consider 3 shots for every elevation or level. The total slides needed for this vertical panorama totaled 15: 3 at 0 degrees, 3 at 45 degrees, 3 at zenith (zenith + 2 on its sides), 3 at 135 (or -45) degrees, and finally 3 at 180 (or 0 backward) degrees. Now imagine we do this landscape orientation, we would probably need 5 slides only considering the wide (horizontal) view of the fisheye lens.
Second hardship appeared shortly after, when I realized that I can't flip certain slides in PTGui and make them stitch upside down. Maybe there is away and I don't know of it yet, but I didn't waste time here trying to figure out. I realized the best way here is to flip the slides themselves (i.e. open them in Photoshop, turn them 180 degrees upside down, and save them into a new file). Mainly, the files that were causing the problem were 6 slides that come after the zenith level (i.e. from 135 degrees and down to 180).
Third problem occurred when, after stitching, there were some high level of artifacts in the final result. Hot pixels (weird colored pixels in the dark areas of the panorama) and other splashes of colors. I had to go back to PTGui and tried to change the settings I've used to do Exposure Optimization in the previous stitch, and after that I've saved the file in OpenEXR format (.EXR) instead of Radiance format (.HDR). The problem was greatly with some need of fixes still, but it was much better than previously done. The thing is, I don't know what solved the problem really; the file format, or the change of exposure optimization settings? I've noticed some differences before in quality and other parameters between the two formats for HDR files. I won't be surprised if changing the format from HDR to EXR did indeed solve the problem. Finally the result...

Suas agus Síos (up and down)

There were of course some adjustments as usual and some blue strikes that I had to put down by Hue/Saturation adjustment layers. Before tone-mapping as well, I went on fixing the white spaces between the arches to give out some details before the process of tone-mapping, by changing exposure and gamma values. Over with this project, now I would think of other panoramas and try to predict their outcome in vertical panoramas like this.

I'm trying now to understand the concept of exposures more, specially for night photography and long exposures. Along with that, I'm delving more into the concept of metering as it is an essential part of the whole process for long exposures and night photography. I even got myself a new calculator to keep it up in my camera's backpack just in case I'd need it to estimate relative stops and exposures. I don't know how it was hidden from me all this time but the concept was simple all the time: a "stop" is a factor of 2. Increasing stop meaning doubling the exposure, and putting it down then we are halving the exposure. Then, a simple formula can be used in a certain manner to have a long exposure (with aid of metering), and thanks to the many websites that were filled with tips (too many to mention here):

T = S * 2^x

where T is the time needed to get the same exposure at metering, and S is the shutter speed (time, in seconds) at metering, and x is the number of stops in play. Now depends on the situation, the formula might change for something else other than the shutter speed, but here I'm sticking myself to metering the scene in Av mode (thus knowing the shutter speed needed to achieve 0EV level). We would have to add several factors in case we are changing the stops in more than one way, like changing the ISO and the f-number (aperture), as well as the shutter speed itself.
Now, to my experiment, and here I've been changing the stops simply by adding ND filters. The experiment was simply to shoot a light bulb behind the window bars, and adding water sprinkles to make some sort of halo around the light source. In this case, we have to do a reverse engineering of some sort. Not exactly, but simply use the formula the other way around: I want to know how many stops I need to put down to make the shutter open for 5 seconds; long enough to sprinkle water in front of the camera.

Behind The Bars

With simple algebra, we fix the time to 5 seconds, and we have the shutter speed known from metering the light bulb, and what is left was the number of stops only to know what ND filters to use.

log₂(T/S) = x

or in case the calculator can't calculate LOG for bases other than 10, then it would be:

log(T/S) ÷ log(2) = x

Using this formula, the result was 3 stops. Thus, I need to use ND8 filter, which reduces the light by 3 stops. Bear in mind that there will be fractions, so approximations are in use here. The result was as I liked, all I had to do is click the shutter speed (with 10 seconds timer to give me more time sprinkling water in front of the camera). I tried to shoot normal HDR for the scene but merging into HDR was problematic with the noise level, despite the nice blue shades in the shadows that showed after changing the color temperature, when merging, to fluorescent. I gave out the idea of HDR for this scene and I'm satisfied with what I achieved with water sprinkling on the scene. I have to say that water seems to increase the the luminance of the scene a bit, and probably it will be a dramatic increase if it was not sprinkling the water!

Weekend is here, and I'm so frustrated at what to do next. So much in mind and so less in power! I have to burn this mind for some photography ideas. I'm planning to order a new set of books for now. Would be good to spend time at work reading some of those. Not sure yet about the books I wanted, but surely one them would be about Night Photography.

Uh Oh

Fortunati...

Had been a weird week sort of. Flew away so fast and, weird weather too. Just on Wednesday you would see the world in a yellowish cover from the dust and the visibility, I presume, was lesser than 500 meters (~1500 ft) if not lesser than 100 meters  (~300 ft) even! I had to go to work anyway but later on I've been told that the employees and admins left the place already! But I stayed until 1:00 p.m. (I finish at 2) and wow, wish if the streets are like that everyday, minus the dust of course.

Taken from my mobile that day, this short video just to show the dusty weather we had on Wednesday. 

Notice that the meteorology department says "we have fresh air"  (???)

Just when you don't take your camera with you and take videos or pictures wherever you go, all the opportunities seem to be showing up in your face wherever you go and you feel paralyzed. However, after this weather we had a "nice" weather back. Literally nice weather with 17°C (62.6F), like some sweet morning in November here. Our weather does not need a meteorologist, but a fortuneteller.

At home, I haven't been doing much, but only taking pictures of the seashells I've collected in the past few weeks, and working on my own project of "peeling" objects (those are shells from the time being). However, I've worked with some pictures from my visit to the Scientific Center a bit and worked on singular shots for my seashells as well.

Leopard Whipray

Unfortunately, those images from the Scientific Center that were taken at maximum ISO (12800) were so hard to clean and somehow were not so appealing. Even the dedicated profiles for Canon EOS 7D that were made ready for NeatImage at this ISO, were not enough to clean the noise. Mostly, they would clean the luminance grain noise, yet there is a hard-to-remove chrominance noise (color spots) that were desaturated a bit, but not removed completely. Beside, the image looks so soft with lot of details lost.

To over come the chrominance noise in this shark shot, which strangely were mostly concentrated on the outside of the shark's body, I've decided to turn everything into Black and White and keep and shark in color. ProPhoto space seem to push such noise type further and cause a problem for any filtration effort!

Nevertheless, there are some points even with ISO12800 where I worked out some HDR images just for fun. They are bad enough with all the noise, thus I didn't care much about how I tone-map them, so I worked less on giving a realistic look for such an image...

The Aquarium of the Scientific Center
People didn't like this image because of the effect or the high noise level, yet what I believe, noise level should not stop you from using your image in any way possible.

 On the shells side now, I've began using my new self-made turntable mounted on the base of the Manfrotto SPH303. Giving some trials still on how to achieve the peeling look for my shells; trying various shells for now. Unfortunately, the process is tiresome. My first trial was with a shell of highly irregular conical shape (unfortunately I don't have a picture at hand at the moment) that comes with spikes. The first trial was set on 20 degrees for each shot (and the lighting provided was on onside). Because of the spiral conical shape, seems that the peeling process (adding layers with layer masks; eliminating the unneeded parts) was going in a wrong way. Probably for such shapes the peeling must go in circles around the center and not sideways! However, I stopped working with this project and moved to taking pictures of single shells:

My current settings after moving from one side of the room (to my right here) to this position where I stuck Velcro on the wall and on the white board to ease putting on and removing. The desk lamp is used to eliminate the object from the top giving some hard shadow on the turntable but at this point it's not so important. With a macro lens and flash unit, and setting WB: tungsten or fluorescent to balance the hot yellow color of the flood light from the desk lamp, the background looks blue rather than white. Probably, I should stick the turntable to the white board next time.

Ringed shell. I wonder if these rings tell the age of the shell itself?

As you can see, I've been using the turntable itself as a stand post for such shots without using the softbox that I've made at home. The softbox makes soft shadows for your objects and you can surround it majorly with 4 light sources (sides, top and front) and it would give a nice white background. I don't mind the hard shadow here though since it's at the bottom of the object. I fix my objects standing like that with a little piece of children playing clay (maybe you can see a bit of it in the image above at the bottom right side under the shell).

One problem here as well, is the center of the circle which I have to appoint precisely. Common problem I've been facing now while rotating my object is having the object at offset from the center relative to the camera's lens. In macro shots, everything becomes so so sensitive! Too many things to take care for, and shots are better be taken with Live-View on (to avoid the mirror flipping and shaking the camera) and of course, a remote (wireless) is a must. 

Later, I've picked another small conical shell but not spiral this time, and more regular in shape (horizontal-wise at least), and this time I've set the base to rotate at 10 degrees instead of 20, which means 36 shots for a complete circle. Done this already (in RAW format) with flash unit and flood light on top, and it was a tiresome process as it is. The flash unit (580EX II) got tired of me and needed a change of battery (but I didn't change the battery as I preferred to wait longer for the recharge than change anything in the configuration). The process now is on the go and started it already, but as I said, it is a long process and a tiresome one, and the picture is not ready as I'm typing this. My panorama programs didn't help much in identifying the type of movement here so I have to do everything manually. With 36 shots for the whole body, minus the top and bottom), the transition of rotating shell was smoother (you can see that by moving through the images quickly and you will see the shell as if it is rotating), and also I've dedicated 18 shots to be "welded" on the right of the basic starting image, and 17 on its left, making the starting point in the center. Although the shots are in RAW (18MP) but I preferred to reduce the resolution and work with TIFF-16bit instead. It is slow already like that, so imagine working with 36 RAW files stacked as layers, as they are 18MP!!!

Ayvarith-wise now. I have to admit I was lazy and awkward toward this project but it was for the sake of working with my camera! Anyway, I've removed the "private" status from the Ayvarith transliteration of Alexander's story in WDC. I was planning to remove this status when I add the vocal sample for a narration in Ayvarith for the whole set, but I think this can be done later, as the transliteration is almost ready and the preface is ready with vocal samples to show how some letters are pronounced. You can check it for yourself here. The Ayvarith transliteration is dedicated as a folder by itself. I'm trying to find some time to record the narration, but with this weather and these jams, my body has a swing of moods...

I'm going to post this now and get back to my Italian music session. It's nice to get away from the English a bit now and then...

Alexander 6, V112.

Despite my job with rice is technically over, but it was another busy day. Going to the the bank to get a paper, and visiting some people to retain the dosemeter badges (a badge to read how much radiation is received in a month). The dust made a fuss of the atmosphere in an unbelievable way. It was one blow by night time and everything was and still yellow until the time of writing this at 1:30 p.m.. It's Thursday, so I hope this won't affect my schedule for going out tonight as usual.

Been playing around with some of my photos from Ireland as usual but I do really lack the inspiration now or the ability to work. In other words, a bit sluggish. Well, anyway, I digged out some photos that I think were never used before in my collection.

Is this what they call a "mustang"?

 Free Gull. Shot that without looking at the gull even!

This morning specifically, I've spent the first hour reading  the new post in Joanathan Boakes' blog, about his little adventure in the woods few days go, looking for some "mysterious" creatures in the woods. I do like this man's style in storytelling, and his Black and White photography looks astonishing indeed! By coincidence as well, he put on a short video for some silhuoette tree which he called, the Crow Tree, just after some days of me making my own image of the Crow Tree that I captured back in Oughterard, Co. Galway in Ireland.

The discussion of history and the mysterious past in that piece of land really inflamed my imagination and my thirst to read more about the Celts in that area, like in some of the old days, back in college when I skipped my study books and preferred to read the Táin Bó Cualgne (The cattle raid of Cooley), and Cúchulainn the hero. I ask myself now, would I face the same thing in Ireland? Would I get such fascination. I know the place I picked for staying is like 10 minutes walk from the Cashel Rock, which has a castle as they say, but it takes more than just a castle to walk to. Back in Galway it was really troublesome to get a photograph at sunset, mainly because the places you would like to catch at this time are sort of far, and you better be in the house before this time. I want to see churches, alive or abandoned, landscapes, ruins, forests, and everything (but no beasts please!). I want this eye to enjoy every grain I can get from Ireland. One doesn't know when he or she might get blind out of sudden, and all is just some vanishing hopes, except of memories about such feelings gained by eyesight.

Reading as usual today with Alain Briot's book, I think it is time now to push on my thinking forward more and try to do some photography. Not only photography, but new ideas to try out. Things I didn't try before, or simply rules that I know but I break intentionally for a purpose.

 

I started to believe now that I have what Briot described as "creativity fear" or "fear of creativity" when you stop doing what you like because you are afraid that people won't like it at all. This is really a killing feature. It feels like you are empty with nothing to do or even the power to do anything. All what you want to do is stare into the monitor (and sleep on the chair sometimes). 

Now, I got settled with an idea in my mind, but I need to think of some place to do it. I want to try the monopod with its full expansion (which extends higher than myself), and I can even attach the VR-head to raise the camera even higher, and start doing some panoramic catch, from high above! Well, it's not so high I believe, but still, it is above the regular sight level. How would that look? We'll see...

__________
2665. Alexander then stopped for a moment and felt guilty
2666. for he was not supposed to rush in a hurry with questions
2667. then he started to say: I am Alexander, the son of Pilippánút,
2668. the king of Caqobia and Caqobians, and the conqueror of Daynur
2669. the Hermit then asked: and what is the name of your grandfather?
2670. Alexander was shocked and said: my grandfather?!
2671. it is weird that I do not know his name at all!
2672. my father never revealed the name to me nor I asked also!
2673. the Hermit smiled and said: but I know his name,
2674. and the names of your ancestors as well
2675. Alexander was amazed for the argument and this he said
2676. "but why it is important to know their names?"
2677. the Hermit said: you are here to know the truth,
2678. the truth of everything and how all this started,
2679. and to know everything, one must know himself"
2680. Alexander then pointed to the Hermit to continue
2681. and the Hermit started on telling the fathers of Alexander
2682. and this he said: you are, Alexander, the son of Pilippánút,
2683. the son of Faklús, the son of Targhus, the son of Sinikdís,
2684. the son of Asjád, the son of Jafrí, the son of Agdalán
2685. then Alexander asked: some names do not sound Caqobian!
2686. and the old man said: yes indeed O dear, they are not,
2687. because you are from an Ayvar root living among Caqobians
2688. Alexander was shocked and felt the world is rotating then

Alexander 6, V8.

It is one busy day, and full of dust. The weather was nice in the morning, but suddenly after a visit from my director who asked me to get the "air sampler" out to collect a sample of air in "such" weather, I suddenly stopped and looked through the window, and voila! A yellow planet was there! The time was almot 9 a.m. even (and not exactly 9).
After some trials again with my tortaloza (my beloved turtle, going to call it tortaloza from now on), and my watch with my rings. Not so much to be mentioned really, but I did, somehow, make up some sparkles on the surface, but yet I had to use the flash head as well. I made 2 images different in DOF and tried to combine them with Exposure Fusion option in Photomatix, but the result was not what I did expect. The image was a bit of what I call "dreamy effect," where you have some blurred fog like texture over the original image (and with some sparkles as well). Anyway, I discovered that the shallow DOF for the two images can be combined together in Photoshop by stocking and blending (not an option for CS2 users);

 

Two images of different depths combined by "blending" as "stock" in Photoshop CS4.

As you can see, in the first image the ring was sharp and the turtle is blurred at the back (it gives a sense of a distance) and the opposite is on the right image, although the ring might not seem so clear whether it is blurred or not. However, with Photoshop and not by exposure fusion, I made a new image with both objects sharp.

I felt that Photomatix's EF option is not what I need, so I found, as mentioned in some site, that there is a freeware named EnfuseGUI. It is a software based on a command-line program made before. "GUI" stands for "Graphical User Interface," which is the type of softwares I do like the best. However, the software got a glitch and crash every time I drag and drop some files in it (or maybe it is because I was using RAW files rather than JPG or TIF?). There is no "add" or "open" buttons in this software, and the only method is to drag and drop. I think I shall try again today and see if this problem is related to the files being RAW or not. I have to convert the files first.

The software has many options that I've never heard of in Photomatix; many sliders and check-boxes here and there and something about maps or the type of map. The map here, as I believe, is the map created from one file in order to measure the weight of each pixel (usually done by doing a Threshold effect in the memory, i.e. not seen in front of you on the monitor but merely something calculated and data collected for usage by the CPU). I could be using Photoshop less now, but I think this is for good.

__________

169. a man got closer to Alexander and started
170. and the story of his folk he went to tell
171. "we are from far away lands there near you,
172. in greenish mounts just before Caqobia,
173. we are the Shepherds, and I am Ikilis,
174. every year at a time like this,
175. we come to this spot with sheep to pasture
176. and the volcano god Kadmún won't allow us,
177. until we pray for him and slay some sheep
178. and if we did not do that, all our fortune will be gone"
179. Alexander boiled with rage but kept silent
180. and talked slowly to Ikilis the shepherd
181. "dear Ikilis, what kind of god is that,
182. who has no mercy for his followers?
183. and what kind of god is that,
184. who cannot make other people worship him?
185. or what kind of god is that,
186. who asks for fortunes of others?"
187. Ikilis thought about it for a moment
188. then asked Alexander: what do you mean O good king?
189. Alexander smiled to know that the man is able to think
190. then Alexander said: no gods on this Earth,
191. except of God who is every where,
192. and that Kadmún is certainly a demon of tricks